What Happened to the Rempys?

There is a house that sits rotting on my walk home from school. The decrepit thing is hidden behind the thick bush and vine that rests and nests itself between the trees, blocking the overgrown gravel walkway from the main road. The faint remnants of a wire fence poke through the flora. As rusty as its master is feeble. The paint chipped wood paneling was so dilapidated that only the faint memory of the house’s color was visible. Speckles of aquamarine paint scattered around the walls like glow-in-the-dark stars in a child’s bedroom. The grass within its curtilage stands tall like a field of corn; it stands so tall that the blades reach up toward the first-story windows- like the hands of Mother Nature reaching to pull it into the ground. The windows seem to sit in front of a void; even at high noon, no light reaches the inside of that house.

Every day I walk by that house in both directions; its boarded door beckons me with each passing glance. Like a schizophrenic’s demonic inner voice telling them to kill. Though I tend to bury these intrusive thoughts and continue walking with my eyes down until I know when I look up I won’t see the evil wooden face peering deep within me.

At school today, my friends and I were discussing some of the various legends and tales about that house. I-to no surprise-was not the only one made to feel uneasy by that house’s deep, terrifying history. My friend Michael told us all a story that made my spine shiver. He said, “That house has been sitting there abandoned for over 40 years.” He paused for a moment. “The way the story goes, a man by the name of Thomas Rempy lived there with his wife and two children- a son and a daughter. Everything about their life was normal or at least seemed so. The father was a chemical engineer who worked at the local plant; the mother was a stay-at-home parent but occasionally was a substitute teacher for the elementary school that both of her kids attended.”  We all leaned in as he continued to tell the story. “Well, despite all of this, one night. Thomas got home from work really late. A neighbor heard the screeching of tires, and when she went to look out her window, she saw Thomas stumbling out of his car, ‘sloppy drunk,’ she said in her statement. Well, according to the autopsy, he wasn’t just drunk. He had enough heroin in him to sedate a rhino.”

We all stared intently at Michael as he told the story. “According to the police report, he stumbled into the garage and grabbed an axe. He started with his wife because their bedroom was on the first floor. He took the axe to her head, damn near splitting it in two. He then went upstairs and into the son’s room; the boy had five deep chop wounds. One on his neck, one on each leg, and two to the head. When the police found the daughter…” he paused, seemingly unclear on how to word it. His tone dropped to a nearly silent monotone. “I heard there were men in hazmat suits stepping out to vomit in the front yard.” We all sat in silence. Michael looked down. The expression on his face shifted to one of fear. Like when a kid gets in trouble. “They found Thomas last. He was in the backyard shed. The top half of his head was gone; chunks of flesh and globs of blood were spread out among the walls behind and around him. He had taken the shotgun from the shed to end his own life.”

On the walk home from school that day, I couldn’t seem to think of anything other than that house. How could somebody do that to their own family? I thought to myself. The more I continued to think about it all. The more it just didn’t make sense to me. If he had enough heroin in his system to sedate a rhino, then how did he have the strength to chop up his own family? How did he have the strength to lift the shotgun off the wall? I chalked it up to hyperbole. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth about what happened to the Rempys. Then I reached that same dreaded portion of my commute.  The dark, glassy voids stared into my soul, the sagging roof pointing me to enter. I don’t know if what I heard about that house is true, but as I watched the front door of it creek open, I knew I would soon find out.