Red Grass

All the lawns on Madison Avenue are covered in blood on Mondays.

All the lawns on Madison Avenue are mowed on Wednesdays. It helps get the remaining blood off after washing on Tuesday.

No one knows how it gets there every Monday.

It started with the House of Smiths in the 90s. The family woke up one day with a bloody lawn. They got rid of the blood themselves and acted like nothing had happened. When it happened again and again, they shipped their son off to rehab. It was a better alternative than what the doctor suggested to them, Asylum. It would have been a social suicide for the elite family.

When it happened to Holloways the next month, they didn’t waste their time hiding it. They called the police. It was written off as someone trying to scare them by using animal blood. They didn’t call the police the next time.

The Johnsons were next, they were new on the block. The only black family that lived there at the time, they kept it quiet and paid their cleaners a handsome amount to get it off as soon as possible. 

That is how it went for all the families that lived with a lawn. However, the individual secrets did not last for long.

At a Saturday party, because only that made sense for the families, the lips loosened as the alcohol flowed freely at the Lopez’s house. All in hushed tones with promises of keeping it a secret and requests for help. Then the couples exchanged information in bed and felt relieved that it was not happening to them only.

It became a collective decision not to let this get out. The reason was obvious. Prices of their estates that were handed down to them over generations could not go down.

The children were forbidden the view of the lawn till it got cleaned, and all the helpers handsomely paid off with tight NDAs. Then began the search for reason.

Men decided to stay up all night, not at the house of one of them, lest their families get scared, but in their own houses. They stood with their bats, guns, and clubs. Some fell asleep, while some were dragged back to bed by their wives. The ones who were there couldn’t believe their own eyes. 

Nothing happened at night, as they all had expected, but at dawn. There was nothing out of the ordinary, and they felt that whatever it was would not appear if they were there to see it. But as Mr. Turner placed his foot down the porch, it was soaked with blood. And there, in front of his eyes, the horror continued.

Mr. Johnson described it as if the sunlight brought the blood with it. The others agreed.

The search for reason turned to history. They went through it again and again. Nothing out of the ordinary. No cemetery was ever built there. No war ever fought at the land. And no sacrifice was given to any Lord in the form of human beings.

The theories began forming as the trust in history turned sour. Maybe something major was missing from the records. Something gruesome enough to never be repeated in words. Shameful enough to be kept a secret from future generations. But why now? The questions were numerous. None answered.

So, the rumors amongst the community began. The Cavanaugh family was accused first. Isolated from the other houses and wealthier than the rest, they became the easy target. Mrs. Packman mused aloud that the previous Mrs. Cavanaugh never attended church because she once had an affair with the resident priest. The Mr. had shot him in the lawn seven times. The town covered the scandal to save the money flow, the church did it to save face, never to be uttered again. Mrs. Packman was just a child then but she swore she remembered that night as her mother spoke in hushed tones.

Thus, the blaming started till every dirty secret came out. Yet, nothing explained why it happened to all of them, and why only on the start of the week.

They all came up with different ideas to get rid of the problem. One house let their sprinklers on whole night. The other covered it with tarpaulin. One even shaved their lawn clean. Nothing helped. Dejected, they turned to the Priest who came to bless the land. He left with full pockets and a string of disappointed followers.

The community suffered with disharmony over how to tackle the problem. The only thing that they agreed on was the need to keep it quiet.

About a decade later, someone slipped up and told the media what happened at the avenue. The reporters were ridiculed, and chased off by the security guards at every house. The culprit was later found to be the disgruntled Chief of Police. He was transferred to a far-off town soon. It paid to have connections in the right places. The next one was more interested in money than what happened at their properties.

The Johnsons sold their house to the Verma family after this, too scared for their reputation. The new family had recently come into big money and wanted to live in a posh area. Mrs. Verma fainted the first Monday. The other ladies went to console her and told her how things happened around there. Mr. Verma raged and cursed the previous occupants. They decided to keep a Hawan and invited the whole colony. Nobody stopped them. Let them try, they thought.

When that didn’t help, they succumbed to the routine and their new reality. But they kept trying different things.

One time they brought a Guru to their home to bless the place on Monday. He stayed at their house for a month, observing the phenomenon and gathering as much information about it as he could. The others also started believing that he could bring the solution. The last Saturday he was there, he stood on the porch at dawn and muttered something in the air while running his fingers through the beads he wore around his neck. Most of their society was there to see him. Everyone waited with bated breath for an explanation.

“I won’t bother you anymore.” He turned around from the lawn and left just as he came, empty-handed. They all breathed a sigh of relief. Some even shed tears of joy. He had finally gotten rid of the problem for them.

They threw a party on Sunday that somehow bled into the next day.

Mr. Verma took a call as he left to get more wine from the kitchen. Guru Ji was found dead, drowned in his own blood. He took the wine and didn’t tell anyone else of the news. Let them enjoy, he thought.

Next morning, the grass was red.

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Mrs. Smith knew why it happened and why it had started that fateful day. It was because her son was awake and wide eyed at the sunrise on first day of the week, for once in his life.

The Smith couple had a daughter no one knew about before they moved to Madison Venue. Prone to hysterics from a young age, they kept her locked away in their soundproof basement after all the doctors had given up on her. No one was allowed there except them and they never let her out.

Mrs. Smith had convinced her husband of letting her out once a week when they knew no one would be able to see her. The staff came in late on Monday so the mother took her dear out in the lawn where she ran wild like a child in her bright yellow dress. Mrs. Smith always dressed her in colorful clothes. The young woman had her rare moments when her mother could get a glimpse of the beautiful girl that she was at five. Lively and healthy. Not sick and shrieking. Or crying and begging.

It was when she was being guided back that she had her fit. It had only happened once before. Usually she passed out after being stuffed to brim by the breakfast Mrs. Smith prepared herself before Mr. Smith carried her down to her room. That morning, he was late to wake up. When the struggling Mrs. turned around at the sound of footsteps, she found her son looking at them with wide eyes. By then, her daughter had started clawing and tearing at her.

She barely had time to react as her son pushed his sister away with a force that knocked her to the lawn after falling from the deck. Blood ran beneath her head as the sun rose.

Mr. Smith ran down the stairs to watch his wife cry in agony as she cradled his daughter’s head. His son stood confused at the sight. It didn’t take him long to figure out what went down. He worked quickly to drag his son away from the scene. He gave him a stiff drink and kept assuring him that nothing had happened till he fell asleep. Hopefully, he would think it was all a dream. He hoped for the best as he joined his wife in the lawn.

It was more difficult to drag his wife away from their daughter. He made sure to clean her thoroughly and left her in their bedroom. It hurt to dig his own daughter’s grave in their backyard yet it had to be done. He stopped only to call the staff and tell them to take the day off. He cried as he lowered the frail body of his angel and sobbed harder as he buried her. When he went back to his wife, she kept muttering something under her breath. He went to clean himself. By the time he returned, his wife was in the same state.

He gathered her in his arms. He only heard, “She won’t leave us” before he passed out.

The next day their son had forgotten what had happened but not Mrs. Smith. She spent the whole week in a trance. It broke when the next Monday their whole lawn turned red. She took a deep breath, comforted by the idea as a smile spread across her face. Her husband had cleared their daughter’s room. It seemed like she never existed but on Monday dawn.

Their son remembered what happened. The problems arose when he started blaming himself and chanting it in front of outsiders, thus the rehab. He had to be sent to asylum after all when his situation deteriorated further till he resembled the sister he had killed. Mrs. Smith never visited him.

He never came back home, forced to spend the rest of his life away.

The Smith couple died early in life, burdened with their own thoughts yet comforted by a red lawn.