CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN……….

As Marco pulled himself onto the heavy chest of drawers a police officer pulled into the driveway of the house on Brainard Road.  Marco was oblivious to anything but getting his hands around Carolyn’s throat.  His fingers twitched with the need to punish her for the betrayal that was fueling his rage.   He had done everything for her, but she hadn’t paid attention.  She had turned out to be just like the others; now she was going to die for that.

The upstairs of the house was ablaze in lights, and it looked like there was a lot of activity for five fifteen in the morning.  

Officer Brad Jensen opened the door of his cruiser, a feeling of uneasiness washing over him as he reached for his flashlight.  He tapped the two-way on his shoulder to let the dispatcher know he was on sight, “Officer Jensen, at the address.  The house is lit up like Christmas morning, but it's quiet; too quiet.   I’m gonna look around”.

Checking the front and sides of the house he saw nothing out of order, but that uneasy feeling crawled across his scalp once again.   He unsnapped his holster as he walked to the front door; standing in the quiet cold morning air, he rang the doorbell.

Just as Marco stood on the highboy, bent at the waist and braced to push the attic door up with his back and shoulders, the doorbell rang.   Carolyn heard it too as the second set of chimes in the upstairs hallway sounded, and she began to scream, “Help me!   Help me, he’s going to kill me……Help!”

With a mighty effort, Marco straighted, pushing the door up with such force that Carolyn staggered back.   As the door swung up, Marco came up through the floor of the attic, his head and shoulders first, then two muscular arms that braced him and were positioned to raise him up into the attic.

The wild eyed stranger was screaming obscenities as he struggled to push himself up.   Carolyn braced herself and brought the bat half way to her shoulder. 

Time slowed to a crawl as Marco put his right arm up to shield his head and grab the bat from the screaming woman.   It was a mistake, because Carolyn took two steps to his left, and instead of coming down on his head as he had anticipated, she did as her nephew had instructed and swung across the ball.

The aluminum bat connected solidly with the left side of Marco’s head, the impact and the sickening thud made Carolyn scream even louder.    He pulled back through the hole in the attic floor; unable to keep his balance on the high boy, he fell to the closet floor.   

Blood streamed from the wound as he clutched his head, rolling from side to side and screaming with pain.  His head began to swell immediately, his left eye slamming shut as his head ballooned.  Blood blinded his right eye and filled his mouth as he continued to scream in pain.   Finally, as if in surrender,  he rolled onto his belly and lay still.

As she stood looking down through the opening Carolyn’s panic would not allow her to remain in the attic even though she knew what might be waiting for her.  All she could see of her tormentor was a bloody head and shoulders face down in the doorway of the closet.  

 She dropped onto the highboy and once again used the wooden shelves as a ladder to reach the floor.   As she stepped off the last shelf Marco let out a moan, then grabbed her ankle with a bloody hand as she tried to step around him.  Raising his ruined face he let out an angry roar, then pulled her leg out from under her. 

Carolyn fell hard, half out of the closet.  Screaming and kicking with her other foot she managed to break his grasp.   She struggled to get to her feet, but he was now standing, and his black boot connected with her rib cage, sending a blinding pain through her body.  Rolling onto her back she looked up to see him standing over her, screaming something unintelligible as blood poured from his mouth and his head wound.  She tried desperately to roll away but once again he delivered a vicious kick, this time to her stomach.   

Doubled over on the floor, unable to defend herself, she was being lifted.  He shook her like a rag doll, punching her face, and then his big hands closed around her throat.  Her body convulsed, her fingers tearing at his hands as she desperately tried to get air into her lungs.   Marco only loosened his grip to throw her to the floor.   Bending over her he clenched his hands around her throat, then started banging her head into the hardwood.

She had no conscious thought, only the sensation of gently pulling out of her pain wracked body just as bright red stars behind her eye lids faded to grey static in her head.   Seconds became hours, hours became days and then time was nothing at all.  It did not register that the crushing pressure on her throat was gone.  

She seemed to have a choice to make, but before she could figure out what it was, Carolyn felt herself yanked back into the body on the floor as it drew one unbelievably deep breath.  Suddenly she was sucked into a blackness that promised to be much more comfortable than the space she now occupied. 

           CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT……

As Carolyn slowly regained consciousness pain was her first visitor.  Every breath felt as if her lungs were full of razor blades; her head throbbed.   Squinting through her right eye, her left eye tightly swollen shut, she saw Jeff sitting beside her bed and realized she was in a hospital.  “Gaaaag”, she managed to croak.

Jeff was immediately on his feet, leaning over her he gently took her right hand.  “Ohhhhhh”, she groaned.  He gently put her hand down and ran to find a nurse.  Before he could get back to her she slipped down into the comforting blackness again. 

 Carolyn didn’t wake again for nearly twenty four hours.  This time her right eye opened completely and she saw day light through the left eye.  Jeff sat slumped in the chair by her bed. Disheveled and exhausted he had fallen asleep with his hand on her hospital bed.  She managed to say his name, but it came out sounding like “Chief” because her lips were so swollen.  

Jeff was immediately awake, “KO, Oh God, baby you’re going to be alright.   You’re pretty banged up, but you’ll be just fine.   I love you sweetheart, and I am so sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”  He put his forehead against the bars on her hospital bed and cried as his frustration and fear finally boiled over.

“Sssokay”, she said. “Sssssokay”.  Carolyn put her hand on his head as he sobbed, and it hit her that she was alive.   She had survived; now she wanted to know exactly what the hell it was that she had survived.


CHAPTER TWENTY NINE......

Four days later, with Jeff pushing her wheel chair, Carolyn was released from the hospital. The couple would go to a hotel until their house was ready to live in once again. The master bedroom, both bathrooms, and Carolyn’s walk in closet had to have walls repaired, repainted, and refurnished. No physical signs of Carolyn’s ordeal would remain when and if they returned to the house.

Just that morning before her release Carolyn finally met the man who had saved her life. After he rang the doorbell that night, Officer Brad Jensen stood at the front door with his senses tingling. Although his written report said he had, he would never know for sure if he actually heard Carolyn screaming in the attic. In truth he believed the feeling that something was wrong became so strong he had no choice but to use his flashlight to break out the glass beside the front door and go into the house.

Once inside there was no doubt someone was in real trouble. Brad heard a man screaming obscenities, and the sound of a violent struggle. Taking the stairs two at a time he made it to the bedroom doorway in time to see Marco throw the bleeding woman to the floor. His head streaming blood, the man straddled her and continued to choke the life from her. He repeatedly banged the woman’s head into the hardwood floor to punctuate his senseless ranting.

“Police! Stand up and back away….” the officer shouted. It had no effect on the man as he shook the woman violently. “Police!”Brad yelled once again.

The man paid no attention, and with only a split second to make a decision, Officer Jensen knew what he had to do to save the woman’s life.

He fired, and as a bright flower of blood bloomed on the front of Marco’s shirt, he released Carolyn’s throat. He paused for just a second, a look of surprise crossed his grotesque face, then he fell on top her and lay completely still.

Even in death it seemed Marco was trying to hold on to Carolyn. The officer could barely see the woman as he quickly crossed the room and pulled the man’s lifeless body from her. The gasping woman fought to pull air into her tortured body, then sank into unconsciousness.

Forty five minutes later Jeff arrived home and found it impossible to get into his driveway. Police cars, reporters and gawkers filled the driveway and spilled out on to Brainard Road.

Jeff stopped his car in the road and ran for the driveway; in his panic he struggled with a police officer who stopped him as he tried to get to the house. He finally convinced the officer who he was, but even then no one seemed to be in the mood to take the time to answer his questions as they walked toward the house.

Just as Jeff and the cop made it across the deep front lawn paramedics brought two gurneys out the front door.

One was completely sheet covered, and Jeff felt a wave of dizziness hit him that almost brought him to his knees. That gurney was loaded into the back of a coroners van parked to the right of an ambulance.

The second gurney was being placed in the ambulance when the police officer who still held tightly to his arm said, “Mr. Breightner, would you like to go in the ambulance with your wife?” He knew he had never wanted anything more in his life.

CHAPTER THIRTY........

Twelve weeks later Jeff and Carolyn were once again living in the house on Brainard Road.   It was a beautiful Sunday morning;  a mug of hot coffee steamed from each bedside table and the newspaper littered the blankets.  As they enjoyed their Sunday morning ritual they tried to reconstruct the pattern of little things they had dismissed over the last four years.

“Do you remember the flowers that seemed to last forever?”Carolyn asked  “I’m pretty sure now that he changed the water and kept replacing the flowers as they died.”

“Yeah, and now I bet you feel bad about all the grief you gave me over drinking too much beer”, Jeff laughed and dodged the pillow she threw at him.

They both recounted missing food and clothing, the television shows that were recorded that neither of them cared to watch. “It gives me the willies to know that he was here almost every day, going through our things, moving stuff around,” Jeff said.

Like most married couples there were things that were misplaced; one or the other of them would rummage for the item for a while then quickly forget about it. Now there seemed to be a mountain of little things they had ignored; as they talked they came up with more and more .

“The cops are looking into the deaths of the people who lived in this house before us,” Jeff said. We’re not the first people this nut thought he had to get out of “his” house. The difference is this time he wanted my wife to go with it.”   The thought made Carolyn shiver, and she snuggled deeper under the blankets.

The last night of his life Marco left the panel in the basement wall open after he freshened up to join Carolyn upstairs. The police found his journal in a bag, and although it read like the ravings of a mad man they had a better idea of what had been going on in his mind.

In his journal Marco talked about killing the former owners of the house and outlined his plan to get rid of Jeff so he and Carolyn could live happily ever after. It was a chilling account of the man’s decent into complete madness.  

His detailed account of stalking Carolyn made her afraid to be alone and terrified of leaving the house.  A picture of Marco showed an attractive man Carolyn had never seen before.  How could he have been watching and following her for four years without her ever seeing that face? 

Carolyn Breightner knew there were things she had to sort out and put into the proper cubby holes in her mind.  She absolutely refused to let this ruin her marriage and her life; summoning the same strength that had helped her survive that night she returned to work just five weeks after the attack.   She still bore some bruises, but she had already taken the steps toward complete physical and mental recovery. 

                                                                        ####

Many times over the last weeks Jeff worried that the house might hold too many bad memories for Carolyn; at times she had seemed quiet and withdrawn. Now, as they held each other, he said “Does it bother you to be here after what happened? If it does we can sell this place and start over; it’s just a house, KO. Wherever we’re together is home.”

Thinking for just a moment, she put her head on his shoulder and snuggled against him as she said, “No. The house had nothing to do with what happened, and the man that did is gone forever. So…the way I see it, if it’s true lightening never strikes twice in the same place this house should be the safest place in the world to raise our baby.” Carolyn looked up into Jeff’s eyes as they filled with a question.

"That's right, my love," her smile was pure sunshine,   "We have a new  beginning on the way."
                                                      
                                                                   The Beginning