This storyis rated K+ for a scene of violence, brief language, and thermatic elements.
YES. I AM STILL ALIVE, THANK YOU. XD This story was originally part of a longer fic (trilogy of fics, actually) which I sadly cancelled. However, I really liked this idea, so I decided to make it a fic all its own. I really wanted to have it up by Christmas, but eh-school, work, general laziness, you know how it is. XD Anyway, it's a day late but here it is! Merry belated Christmakwanzakah (I will never for the life of me remember how to spell that. XD)!
A COLD DAY IN DECEMBER
It was starting to snow again. Jill zipped her coat to the neck and pulled the hood over her head, causing the length of her ponytail to spill out the sides. It wasn't far now; just over this hill, up the road, and the mailbox should be right there. There was even a cardboard snowman holding a "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" sign stuck into the ground beside it.
Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she trekked to the crest of the hill. Once at the top, she paused a moment to take in her surroundings. Distant clusters of dark pines and bare-branched sycamores lined the flat white horizon in every direction. It was picturesque in a it-would-make-a-nice-Christmas-card-cover way, but the evenness of the ground unnerved her. It was just so flat—it looked like there was nothing out there except the occasional tree. Jill was a mountain girl, born and raised in the shadow of the Rockies, and as such she preferred a more interesting setting than just nothing. This here, this was nothing.
But Chris would like it, she knew. Chris was a real outdoorsy type, and he would've found something appreciative in it. She would've asked him to come along, but she knew if she'd told him why she wanted to come out here, he would have stopped her from coming. And this was something she had to do.
When she came to the smiling snowman and mailbox, the side of which read "R & W HOWELL 405" in bold, black lettering, she stepped off the road and started up the long, unshoveled driveway. At the top was her destination: an old farmhouse with peeling white paint and Christmas lights strung along the eaves. It looked so normal…maybe that's why she suddenly found herself hesitant to go inside. She stood for a minute staring up at the house, at its lit windows and its rusting drainpipes, before her eyes fell on the front door.
Before she had time to think of any reason not to enter the house, she forced herself up the porch steps and knocked on the door.
It opened a moment later, and Jill found herself staring into the same cool, blue eyes Wesker had had before he'd injected himself with the T-Virus.
"Yes?" said the old woman as she placed a hand on the door frame.
"Uh, hi," Jill said, forcing a smile, "My car died down the road, and the snow's interfering with my cell phone reception, so I was wondering if I could use your phone to call someone?"
The woman stared at her a moment, scrutinizing her in a manner so similar to Wesker's it made Jill sick.
Finally, she moved aside.
"Come in."
"Thank you," Jill said.
As she stepped inside, a wave of cinnamon and fresh gingerbread hit her and filled her nostrils. The walls of the foyer were plastered in a homey, yellow wallpaper that made the room look smaller and darker than it was. To her left was a doorway through which she spied the living room, lighted only by a small, simply decorated Christmas tree. Her eye caught an old bureau positioned beneath the room's only window. Atop it set an array of knickknacks and framed photos.
"The phone's in the kitchen," said the old woman.
Pulling down her hood, Jill turned around and followed the woman through a doorway opposite the one which led to the living room. In here, the smell was stronger, and it made her mouth water. Gooey bowls and pans were scattered all along the counter and stacked haphazardly inside the sink.
"You'll have to excuse the mess," the woman said. "I've been baking since six this morning. Still have two more batches to go."
She moved to the lit oven. After peering inside, she grabbed two nearby oven mittens and slipped them on.
"The phone book's on the counter if you need it."
Jill looked around. There was the phone screwed into the far wall but no phone book on the counter. Carefully pushing aside a mound of mixing bowls, she found it shoved against the wall.
"I believe B & S Garage does towing," the woman said.
"Thanks."
Jill didn't actually call the number, though; she only pressed buttons until she heard an operator error message, and as it played out she pretended to arrange a tow with the assistant manager of B & S Garage. By the time she hung up, the old woman had taken the baking sheet out of the oven and set it atop the stove. Several rows of reindeers, Santa Clauses, and other brown, Christmas-shaped cookies lined the sheet.
"They said it'll be about an hour before they can get out here."
"Hmm. Must be the snow. Always slows everything," the woman said, tossing the mitts aside. "Well, you're welcome to stay until the tow gets here."
"Thank you. That's very kind of you, ma'am."
"Just call me Winnie. Everyone does."
Winnie.
"Well go on, have a seat," said Winnie, indicating the table by the window. "There's a coat rack right outside the door if you don't mind hanging up your coat. It'll dry quicker that way."
After Jill had placed her jacket on the rack, she returned to the kitchen to find her host pouring a box of cookie mix into a large bowl.
"Can I get you anything thing to eat or drink?" she offered.
"No, I'm fine, thank you," Jill said, sitting at the table. "I'm Valerie, by the way."
Winnie poured two cups of milk into the mix. "I don't believe I've seen you around before. Are you new in town?"
"No, just passing through." When that did not seem to satisfy the old woman's curiosity, Jill added, "My fiancé and I are thinking about moving out here after we get married. This is the first weekend either of us has had off in months, so I decided to drive down and look at properties."
Winnie cracked three eggs over the bowl then started stirring the mixture together.
"It wasn't very smart of him to let you go all by yourself, not with a snow storm like this on the way," she said.
"No, I guess not."
"But in any case, Kearney County is a nice place to live. Not a lot around—you have to drive all the way to Garden City just to see a movie—but nice anyways."
Winnie worked quietly while Jill watched. After she'd finished whipping the batter, she grabbed an egg beater and slowly moved it around the bowl. Soon the batter became a thick, gooey mass of dough, and she scooped it onto a cutting board where she began to flatten it with a rolling pin.
Pressing the cutouts in flour, Winnie carefully arranged them in neat rows on a baking sheet she'd pulled from a pile of pans and slid it into the oven. She tweaked the setting dials just a hair then grabbed a metal spatula which lay beside her and gently pried each cookie from the baking sheet she'd set atop the stove.
"There, that should just about do it," she said as she placed the cookies in a Tupperware container. "I might not have to make another batch after all."
She must've noticed the blank look on Jill's face, because then she added, "I'm going to a church dinner this evening—that is, if this snow doesn't keep me from it."
After winding a small kitchen timer, she walked to the window by which the table was set and gently raised the lace curtain.
"I don't think I've seen it snow this bad since I was twelve or thirteen," she said.
"It's pretty bad out there," Jill agreed.
"Mmm. Cold, too." Winnie drew her shawl closer around her shoulder. "I better put more wood in the fire before it goes out."
Jill followed Winnie into the living room, where an old-fashioned fireplace took up the majority of the front wall. By its iron grate set a box of cut wood. Winnie stooped down beside it and began heaving the logs into fire.
"Do you need any help?" Jill asked.
"I've got it. You go on and have a seat; I'll be done in a minute."
Positioned in a semi-circle facing the fireplace were three chairs: a puffy green recliner, a wooden rocking chair, and a plain sitting chair which Jill guessed went with the bureau. Since it was closer to the bureau, and because she wanted to leave the more comfortable choices for the frail old woman, she selected the third chair.
When Winnie had placed the last log in the fire, she grabbed hold of the mantle and slowly hoisted herself to her feet.
"Feels warmer in here already," she said, taking a seat in the rocking chair. Quietly, she began to rock. "So where are you from?"
"Topeka," Jill replied.
"I went there myself once, back in the fifties. My husband was a doctor—he attended a conference at one of the big hospitals, and I went with him."
She reached out and grasped the photograph nearest to Jill. She stared glaze-eyed at it for a moment, a big smile stretching the wrinkles of her face, then tilted it sideways so Jill could see. It was an old black and white portrait of a man, woman, and small boy.
"That's him there," Winnie said, indicating the man. "And that's me, when I was younger. My hair was just about the same color as yours."
Ignoring the last comment, Jill reached out and grabbed the mahogany frame. When she did so, Winnie let go, and Jill was free to hold the portrait at an angle which gave her a clear view of its three subjects. The woman, Winnie, and the boy sat in the foreground, him planted in her lap, while the man, Roger, stood behind them with his hand upon Winnie's shoulder. Jill felt her stomach do a painful flip as she studied him. He was almost a carbon copy of Wesker: the same nose and jaw, the same height, a nearly identical build. But the hair color was much darker (Jill guessed it had been auburn or light brown), and the mouth was all wrong. It was too wide, too bold. Too genuine.
"Oh, he was so handsome," said Winnie, "And smart too; he got a perfect score on the SAT. He could've gone to Harvard or Yale if he wanted to, but Roger said he wanted to stay here and start his own clinic because "the people of Lakin and Deerfield need a doctor here," "it isn't fair to make them go all the way to Garden City just to get help." And as soon as he graduated from KU, that's exactly what he did."
"Sounds like he was a good man," Jill replied, not taking her eyes off the portrait.
"He truly was. To this day, I've never met another soul as kind and selfless as Roger. When he was alive, I caught myself from time to time wondering how a man like him could ever take an interest in a simple farm girl like me. Sometimes, I still wonder."
The old woman gave a sigh, one more wistful than tired, and settled back into her chair. Jill knew that if she was to discover what she'd come here looking for, she had to act now while her host's mind was still lost in the past. So, flipping the frame around, she pointed to the boy planted atop the younger Winnie's lap and asked:
"Who's this?"
It was a long time before Winnie answered. As she gazed at the portrait, her blue eyes glazed over as though she were in a trace, and she reached out for the frame. Even after Jill handed it to her, she continued to stare at it with the same glossy look. A small, bittersweet smile tightened her face.
"That's my son, A.J.."
"Is he coming in for Christmas?" Jill forced herself to ask.
"No," Winnie replied in a raspy voice. "No, he's not."
"Does he have to work, er…?"
A tear rolled down her cheek. "No."
Jill bit down hard on her lip. She hadn't meant to hurt anyone, but now she realized how stupid she'd been not to think of the pain her snooping would cause the old woman.
"I—I'm sorry if I…"
"It's all right," Winnie said as she brushed the wetness from her eyes. "If you and your fiancé move down here, you'll hear about it sooner or later. It's better that you hear it from me."
With a heavy sigh, she placed the portrait in its original spot upon the bureau then turned her gaze to the fire.
"It happened the fall of '62," she began. "Roger had just gotten back from a business meeting in Garden City; some people from Umbrella had contacted him about possibly supplying his practice. They wanted to interview him and do a background check—they were "very picky about who they supplied," he said. A.J. had just turned two. Roger made sure all the doors and windows were locked while I put A.J. in his crib. I read him Little Red Riding Hood—that was his favorite book—until he fell asleep. Then I tucked him in, gave him a good-night kiss, and sh—" She cleared her throat, "shut the door.
"Some time in the night, I guess around one or two, he started crying for me, for "Mommy." He'd stopped by the time I'd gotten out of bed, but I thought I should go check on him—just in case. When I reached the door, I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I woke up Roger; then he grabbed the pistol he kept in the dresser, and told me to stay in the bedroom with the door locked.
He went into the hall with the pistol up while I stayed by the door, listening. I heard Roger yell something—I couldn't tell what—then his gun go off, and I heard A.J.'s crying coming from—" Winnie's hand went to her quivering mouth. "…from the foyer.
"I ran out and saw two men, dressed in black from head to foot, standing with the front door open. One of them had some sort of handgun pointed off towards the kitchen; the other one had A.J.. He was holding his hand over his mouth so he couldn't cry. I didn't even think—I just ran at them. The one with the gun grabbed me and threw me against the wall. A.J. started crying for me again. I looked up, and the man who'd thrown me was holding the door for the other one carrying A.J.. I grabbed his ankle, but he kicked me in the head—kicked me so hard I couldn't see straight, and the only thing I could hear was A.J. screaming "Mommy, Mommy!" over and over again. Then I blacked out.
"The next thing I remember is Roger shaking me awake. He said he'd just called the police and they'd be there any minute. I wanted to know where A.J. was, what happened to him, and he said, "They took him—those"—"those sons of bitches took him."
Winnie grabbed a tissue from the box setting by the portrait and wiped the dampness from her cheeks.
"When the police came, we told them what happened, showed them where Roger'd shot at them, where they'd knocked him out—they had hit him in the side of the head with the handgun—and where I'd blacked out. Of course they didn't find anything; no fingerprints because they'd been wearing gloves, no signs of forced entry, no tire tracks because we had a gravel driveway. We didn't have any neighbors, so there was no one around who could've heard the gun or seen them get away. The police spent a week searching the woods around the house and around town, but they didn't find anything.
"Roger and I did everything we could to try to find him: we had his picture put on milk cartons, we put it in the newspaper, we talked to the local news station…the police thought we'd get a response right away, because to them it looked like a cut-and-dry random case. But we never heard anything.
"After a while, folks got to thinking maybe Roger had done something with A.J., or maybe I had, or maybe we both had. Eventually the suspicion got so out-of-control no one would let either of us alone with their children, and we'd get horrible letters in the mail from people accusing us of being baby killers, baby snatchers, black marketers, all sorts of awful things. That went on for about a year, I guess. Roger wanted so badly to move to another county, take his practice with him, but I told him, "No, this is A.J.'s home—if he comes looking for us, this is where he'll start." Oh, we had such terrible arguments about it. But in the end, I think he changed his mind because even though he knew A.J. probably never would come looking for us, he still needed to believe he was out there and could come back.
"Then about two years later, we decided to pull his picture from the paper. It had gotten too painful to wake up and see it first-thing every morning. And about five years after that, we had his picture taken off the milk cartons. Then we started boxing things up and taking them down to the Salvation Army. It wasn't easy to do, but we reckoned a child ought to play with those toys, even if that child wasn't A.J. And I think both of us knew we weren't going to have any more children."
"In the end, the only things we kept of his were the outfit he wore in that picture, his Little Red Riding Hood book and a little stuffed bear he always slept with. I still have them all in a box on the top shelf of my closet. Sometimes, I pretend that he's coming home to get them so he can give them to his own son…even though I know that's not really going to happen."
After Winnie lapsed into silence, Jill suddenly realized how sick she felt. Sitting here in this living room with this woman, upon this chair where Wesker himself had probably sat…she thought she was going to throw up. Steadily, she breathed in and out.
This had been a bad idea.
As she waited for her nerves to settle, she tried to think of something to say, something to express just how awful she felt. In the end, the only thing she could think of was:
"I'm so sorry. That's…that's horrible."
Sniffing, Winnie neatly folded the tissue in her hand.
"I pray to God I'm wrong," she said. "I pray to God they found some mercy in them to let my baby go, or else he escaped—that he's a lawyer now, or a doctor like his daddy; that he met a nice girl like you and married her; that they have a house full of kids somewhere; that the reason he hasn't come back is because he doesn't remember—"
A shrill ring cut her short.
"Oh, the cookies!" Winnie exclaimed.
She leapt from the chair and rushed into the kitchen, leaving Jill alone with her thoughts. But the last thing Jill wanted to do right now was think. Leaning forward, she placed her head in her hands and closed her eyes. Usually when she did this, she just let her mind wonder to whatever thoughts it felt like, but this time she made it go completely blank.
For how long she sat like this, she didn't know. But it seemed like a half hour or more had passed before she realized she needed to leave. If she stayed any longer, Winnie would expect a tow truck that wasn't coming to pull up her driveway—not to mention, just being in this house was…too much.
As she stood, Jill spared a last look at the portrait. Suddenly, her eye caught a gold plate that she hadn't noticed before screwed onto the bottom of the frame. She picked it up and tilted it towards the window until she could clearly read the plate's text:
THE HOWELL FAMILY
ROGER, WINIFRED, & ALBERT JAMES "A.J."
Immediately she set the portrait back on the bureau.
She walked into the foyer where she'd hung her jacket and grabbed it off the rack. She then padded into the kitchen to thank the old woman for her hospitality and bid her good-bye but paused when she saw her bent over a baking sheet, carefully arranging a spread of raw cookies.
"I'll be done in just a second," Winnie said in a loud voice. She turned to grab a rag off the sink. "Just need to—oh, there you are!"
"I think I should be heading out now," Jill said. "The tow'll be here any minute now."
Winnie glanced at a clock on the wall. "Well, okay…are you sure you don't want to wait for them here? I'd hate for you to have to go back out there in this weather…"
"I'll be fine. Thanks for everything."
Shrugging into her jacket, Jill moved to the door.
"Well, you're quite welcome." Winnie said as she followed her. "Truth is, I don't get visitors very often, so it was nice to have some company for a change—even if….Well, anyway, it was nice to meet you, Valerie."
The smile she gave Jill was small and delicate—and it curled slightly at one side, just as Wesker's always had.
"It was nice to meet you, too, Winnie," Jill replied, forcing a smile in return.
"If you do end up moving down here, feel free to drop by any time."
Jill pulled up her hood. "I will."
She kept her eyes focused on the distant horizon as she exited the house, Winnie holding the door for her, and descended the porch stairs. She felt the old woman's eyes on her even when she'd reached the top of the driveway, so out of politeness, she turned and waved her final good-bye. Winnie returned the wave then went back inside. As soon as the door closed, Jill quickened her pace down the hill.
She'd thought that by coming here, she would gain some semblance of the peace of mind she hadn't had since the day Wesker had led her, Chris, and their team mates into the Spencer Estate then left them there to die. She'd thought that if she could find evidence of the monster the man would become, she could explain away at least some of the many horrific memories as "the work of an evil man." But the only things she'd found were a lonely old woman and a lifetime of hurt.
And now she wondered: if Umbrella had never stumbled upon Roger Howell's university and government records…if Wesker hadn't been taken from his biological parents…if he could've grown up with them…would he have still become the same unfeeling psychopath who'd sought to control the world?
It was a question to which Jill knew she'd never find the answer.
As soon as she reached the road, a sharp wind began to blow from the south. Grabbing hold of her hood, she pushed herself past the mailbox and snowman and slowly made her way down the road. When she reached the cluster of trees under which she'd parked her car, she climbed inside and just sat there a moment, eyes closed, as the engine warmed. Hot air gradually filled the car. She could've fallen asleep then and there, but the urge to get away from here was stronger than the urge to sleep. So opening her eyes, Jill took hold of the steering wheel, popped the gear into Drive, and gently nudged the gas petal until the car had pulled onto the road.
She motioned to make a U-turn so she could go back to the main road, but the hour under the trees had left a layer of pine needles and snow on her windshield. As the wipers swept them away, she caught a glimpse of the house in the distance, still nestled atop its snowy hill like every other house on this road. Immediately she cut the wheel to the left and avoided checking the rearview mirror until she reached the main road.
Even then, she knew that house would haunt her for years to come.
the end.
Well, there you have it. Review if you want (If you critique, please be as specific as possible because obviously I wouldn't make mistakes while writing if I knew I was making them, so a critique that says something like "there are some grammar mistakes here and there" or "so-and-so seemed OOC in some places" doesn't help me. I need specific lines + passages, plzkthnx.) and thanks for reading!