The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys

By Christin Haws

Brothers Jared and Justin Woodlow, known as Big and Little to just about everyone, are cleaning up the family cabin for sale, an activity created by their parents to help enforce Jared's latest attempt at sobriety, something alcoholic Jared resents and hopeful Justin appreciates. While Justin craves to have his older brother back to his "old self", Jared struggles with the reality of functioning without booze.

Jared finds his sobriety taking a turn for the disturbing when odd, not-so-easily-dismissed things start happening, things Justin doesn't witness.

Is Jared's alcohol deprived brain creating these illusions?

Or is there more than memories and dust in this old cabin?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christin Haws
• Release date: Feb 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370352463

Christin Haws

Christin Haws is a writer and podcaster with a fixation on reruns and cop shows, a love/hate relationship with the Chicago Cubs, and a tendency to use humor as a coping mechanism. Decidedly unhip, she occupies space in a small town in the middle of a cornfield.

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The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys

A novella

By Christin Haws

Copyright 2016 Christin Haws

Smashwords edition

This is a work of fiction.

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Table of Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

About the Author

Home

I

The cabin stood in the middle of the woods, a lonely place made lonelier because it hadn’t been used in years. Once a summer retreat and a Christmas getaway, the life in the place slowly drained out of it as the lives that used to fill it slowly stopped showing up to the family functions. Now the cabin, still in good repair, just in a desperate need of a cleaning and clearing out, was to be sold. The Woodlow family decided it was time to let it go.

Neil and Kathleen Woodlow had three children, Jessica, Jared, and Justin, and it was the younger two, the boys, that they were sending up to the cabin for the week to clean the place up so it could be sold.

Jared Woodlow woke up the morning they were supposed to leave with a headache, but then, he usually did. Those headaches, though, were of the hangover variety. The one he woke up with this morning, and every morning for the past two weeks, was caused by being stone cold sober for too many days in a row.

He gave a thought to lying in bed until his mother came up to check on him, nudge him, and cajole him to get up, but he decided he might as well just get it all over with on his own. Throwing the covers off of himself, Jared sat up with a groan, swinging his bare legs over the edge of the bed. He sat there for several minutes in nothing but his shorts waiting for the throbbing in his head to settle down. Sobriety had made sleeping difficult and Jared often found himself waking up with night sweats he thought only menopausal women were allowed to have. If he slept with any clothes on at all, he woke up feeling like he was trying to sleep in a pond. He would have slept nude if he wasn’t at his parents’ house.

The room was too bright in a morning sort of way and Jared squinted against the glare of it. The light hurt, not quite in the hangover way, but it made him think of that, and he missed it in way because he knew how to fix that kind of hurt.

Sobriety was like an eternal hangover with no hair of the dog remedy.

Voices in the hallway forced Jared out of bed, at least to put on pants before his mother came to his door to do her cheerful knock before barging in on him before he could say a word.

Stumbling to his packed bag in the corner of the room (Jared was already packed for the cabin because he’d never unpacked when he arrived at his parents’ house after getting out of rehab the week prior), Jared pulled the jeans he’d been wearing the day before off of the top of the bag and struggled to put them on without going back to the bed to sit down. He found himself leaning against the door for balance as he did what most folks do, put his pants on one leg at a time.

Here the voices were much louder and Jared could make out that one was his mother and the other was his little brother Justin, who really wasn’t at all little anymore, but that eight years between them would always feel like a lifetime to Jared and as a result, Justin would always be a baby, an inexperienced kid. Pressing his ear to the door now, his jeans hanging open and loose on his hips, Jared listened to the conversation that was less conversation and more a list of instructions a parent gives a babysitter before a night out.

You really have to watch him, Little, his mother was saying. There’s no alcohol at the cabin, but that doesn’t mean he won’t leave to get some. Don’t let him go anywhere alone. Don’t let him have the keys to the car. Hide them if you have to.

I know, Mom, Justin said, sounding exasperated. I can handle Big.

Big and Little. Nicknames bestowed upon them by their sister Jessica because despite the age difference between them, Jared and Justin looked remarkably alike. The nicknames had stuck, at least with family and some friends, to the extent that Jared was pretty sure that some of his more distant relatives didn’t know his real name.

As a rule, Big had always taken care of Little. Jessica was three years older than Jared, so when Justin did come along, she was out of the house and away at college by the time he was seven. It was up to Big to teach Little the ways of the world.

And now their mother was schooling Little on how to take care of Big.

Jared turned away from the door, zipping and buttoning his jeans, and went in search of a shirt. He couldn’t listen to any more of this conversation, a conversation that had no doubt been repeated multiple times over the last week when it was decided that Jared and Justin should go out to the cabin to clean it up for the sale, a conversation he couldn’t be privileged to because he was the one being handle. He knew what this was because it had happened before, the last time they’d made him go to rehab, a 72-hour stint that’s effect lasted a little more than a week. The whole point of