The Jamesons

Sunday.Lemmon Valley; Reno, Nevada.USA.Present Day…

Todd knocked on Nadeen’s door.“Ok for daddy to get your laundry, Pumpkin?”

The seven-year-old got up and opened the door for him instead of a verbal answer; the thoughtful child she was.

“Thanks, Naddie,” Todd said as he gave her a peck on her forehead.As he grabbed her laundry basket, Nadeen had already made it back to her bed; drawing and coloring on blank sheets of paper.

“What’s that, Picasso?Looks like a Picasso-cat from hell!”

Nadeen giggled as he reached over and picked up the girl’s artwork to look at it.

“Todd,” came Valery Jameson’s voice, admonishingly.She, also, stepped into Nadeen’s room.“I thought we talked about that kind of language when talking with her.”Nadeen’s mother then looked at her with a beaming smile until she looked at her daughter’s drawing.“Jesus, kid, what did you watch last night?”

Now the family of three were all laughing in the medium-sized bedroom.

“If this is your way of saying you want a cat,” Valery said with a playful warning, “I say you have to do a better job of taking care of your dog, first!”

“I know.But that’s not what I was doing, mommy…I saw it the other day…I’m calling him Water Baby!”

A chuckle from Valery, as she, too, picked up the drawing to look at it then handed it back to her daughter.“Ok.Given that cats hate water, I don’t see the connection there, but it’s your world, Pumpkin.”

“Hey, babe,” Todd said, switching to a slightly more serious tone, as he stopped by Nadeen’s dresser that was by her bedroom door, “when did you buy this stuffed animal for Naddie?Kind of reminds me of her drawing there!Must be a phase…”

Valery gave a slight look.“I thought you got it for her!I happened to notice it a couple of months ago…I just assumed you took her to Vegas when I was away at that conference in Australia, and she won it from some game.”

Todd took the time to pick up and look at the plush, though anemic-looking, stuffed animal.It had a more stylized animalness about it, though it was hard to tell if it was meant to be a dog, cat, or some other mammal.“No…I never took her to Vegas while you were in Sydney…Well, if we didn’t get it for her, how’d it get here?”He set it back, among all her stuffies, family pictures, and other collectables.

The two grown-ups glanced at one another; all playfulness gone now.

“Naddie, Pumpkin,” Valery addressed her; sitting next to her at the edge of Nadeen’s bed, “did your uncle Allen give this to you while he was working on the basement and we were at work?”

Nadeen regarded the toy for a few seconds and shook her head.“I don’t even remember when it was put there...”

Todd, laundry basket now on the floor next to him, looked at his wife, though he was clearly thinking about something.“Allen probably was just playing the good uncle while we were working and Naddie was at school…I wouldn’t be surprised he just placed it there and went back to fixing our basement.”

Todd proceeded to pick up the laundry basket and headed for the hallway.Valery kissed their daughter on the cheek and softly closed the door behind her as she followed Todd in the hall.

“Speaking of which…I hate to bring this up, babe—”

“I know, I know…I’ll ask him to put it in second gear a bit, ok?”

Both were now going down the stairway to the basement, where the laundry machines were and the subject matter had switched to.

“My parents used contractors when I was young, Todd…I don’t remember it taking months to do a relatively small job on a house!”

Now both were placing those same clothes into the washing machine.

“Babe, he’s got other contracts—much bigger than ours!He told us, before he took on this job for us, that those retailers would have to take precedence over any of his smaller clients.Or, he could lose that job!”

Now, the washer was started.

“Todd, I appreciate that your big brother is watching out for his little bro and squeezed us in, but if it’s a simple case of him having too much work and not enough time to work on our house in a timely manner, then maybe we should simply contract someone else who has the time…nothing personal.”

Todd, having a close relationship with his older brother—especially given that both of their parents had passed away—felt a sense of loyalty to his brother.But even he had to silently nod at his wife’s point.

“Alright…I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see which way he wants to go with our contract.”

Valery gave him a quick peck on his cheek and went upstairs.

Wednesday.The Jamesons’ Residence…

“…Hey, bro, I finally got all that work done with your basement’s ceiling,” Allen Jameson, Todd’s elder brother, informed Todd on his smartphone while he was gathering all his equipment and his associated items.The Jamesons were at their jobs—Valery, a hospital administrator at Reno’s West Hills; Todd, a self-employed Techie, was at a client’s facility.Young Nadeen was still in school.

“Yeah, so if you could relay that to bossman…no, your wife!Ha!Well, you can thank Lee…”

Allen glanced at the early-twenty-something subcontractor.The young man chuckled as he continued to gather Allen’s sprawling clutter in the Jamesons’ basement.

“Yeah, hiring him saved my ass on this project,” Allen continued, talking with Todd.“I thought about what you said to me the other day and I had to breakdown and hire a subcontractor…I tried holding out but— ”

The Jamesons’ dog, Turtles, started to bark sharply upstairs!Allen and the younger contractor, Lee Manja, looked at each other; alarmed.

“What’s going on over there,” Todd asked; able to hear the dog over the phone.

“Is this one of Val’s short-days from work, Todd,” Allen put to him, his eyes still on that of Lee’s as Turtles continued non-stop with his barking!

“No…Allen—”

“We’ll check it out, bro…you concentrate on work, buddy.I’ll call you later.”

Amid the barking, neither contractor said a word, except via their eyes and hand gestures about who’d go up the stairs first.Given that it was Allen’s family, he insisted with a stern nod to the young contractor.Before going up the stairs, both men grabbed a heavy or sharp tool from their tool box and proceeded.

By the time Allen and Lee made it up stairs and into the hallway, the dog had never stopped barking and it was clear that Turtles was in Nadeen’s room.Allen looked back at Lee and silently gestured toward the bedroom and made a ‘fight-sign,’ given there were two of them.

When the dog sensed the two men, the young dog’s pattern of barks changed a bit.The dog franticly hopped around the two contractors’ feet upon their arrival in the room, and Turtles proceeded with his loud barks—facing Nadeen’s slightly-opened closet door!There were no lights on at all in the Jamesons’ house, except for the basement where the two contractors had been working.And that included this particular closet door, that was ajar…

“Easy boy,” Lee said to Turtles; bent over while stroking the dog’s head.It partially worked.The dog was down to a whimper.“Careful, Allen…”

The floor under Allen’s weight squeaked once; the sound causing him to stop in his tracks.

“I’m warning you, there are two of us with weapons…you’ll have to deal with us and the cops, so…”

Nothing, except for Turtles’ high-pitched whining.As Lee tried to calm the dog, he happened to glance at Nadeen’s drawings, over at a loose-pile on the corner of her bed.And then he saw that same drawing that Nadeen’s parents had made fun of a few days ago!And, especially, when he looked atop of the dresser next to the bedroom’s door, Lee saw the enigmatic stuffie.Its ambiguous face and wide-eyed stare looking right at him!

“Oh my god—Allen, we have to go—now!”

Before Allen could even respond, young Lee grabbed the middle-ager by his shirt collar and pulled him toward the door as the two men and the dog ran out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out of the house all together!

An Hour Later; Front Lawn of The Jamesons’ Residence…

Valery pulled her SUV up to the driveway, behind Todd’s car.She didn’t understand why her husband had not simply pulled into the garage.Nor, for that matter, why Todd, Allen, and the young contractor, Lee, were all standing on the front lawn; discussing something!Valery usually arrived home later than Todd, given her responsibilities as an administrator at West Hills Hospital.Being self-employed made it much easier for her Techie-husband to leave his job earlier.Though, this time, she was a bit late showing up because the couple decided to keep their seven-year-old out of the situation.So, after Nadeen got out of school, Valery dropped Nadeen off at her mother’s house, on the other side of Reno.

“Hey, all” she said, all three men turning their attention to Valery.They all greeted her upon her joining the small circle.“So, what’s going on?And why haven’t we involved the cops?”

Todd deferred to Allen and his subcontractor.“Why don’t you guys tell her?”

“Sis,” Allen came in, gesturing to the younger hired hand, “this is Lee Manja.Besides helping me finish your basement ceiling, there’s another reason I’m glad I hired him…”

She gave a nod to the young man; Lee obliged.

“Ok, Mrs. Jameson, like I told your husband; I’m not expecting you to believe me, but I suggest you interpret the situation in a way that makes you believe it…”

Valery gave a questioning look at her husband and her brother-in-law, but she remained silent; listening to Lee.

“My background is Native-American.Specifically, Washoe.My ancestors have been in these parts of Nevada and eastern California for about six thousand years…so, Washoe know a bit about life around here, huh?I’m of a group of young Washoe who’ve been accepted among our elders to help pass down our ancient culture and practices.And that includes what a lot of other people call legends and myths…”

Lee looked at the house, which was just a few yards away.Todd had put Turtles in his outside kennel, for safekeeping.“Ever hear of water babies from Indians around here, Mrs. Jameson?”

Valery shot a surprised look at Todd.He, in turn, gave a knowing nod.

“My daughter—she did a drawing of some weird animal—”

“And called it Water Baby,” Lee said with a nod.“Your husband told us this.And, frankly, it all makes sense…I saw that drawing your daughter did.What else did you notice about it?”

“I said it looked like something Picasso would’ve drawn,” Todd helped out.Valery nodded to confirm her husband’s point.

By this time, Lee had pulled out his smartphone and brought up several pictures from his album section.He held up his phone so everyone could see all the petroglyphs he had; giving swiping motions every few seconds so the other three could see all the ancient paintings.

“I took these in both California and Nevada, from my ancestors’ settlements a couple of years ago.That style of drawing your daughter did looks awfully similar to ancient Washoe!And, yes, Todd, in form it does look very much like modern art of the 1950s!”

“So, our daughter was influenced by the spirits of your ancestors,” Valery asked, doubt flavoring her words as she looked at their house.

“Actually, Mrs. Jameson, I have no idea why your daughter drew that picture.But what I do see are visual and cultural connections.Water babies, out here; in the Lemmon Valley-Golden Valley parts of Nevada?That doesn’t make sense to me…maybe I haven’t learned enough of my ancestors’ ways.

“I also know that water babies are generally a bad situation!Most times, as the legends went, if you didn’t get sick by them you were killed!Though some Washoe healers, in ancient times, were able to placate water babies with offerings and got some spiritual-powers augmented in return…

“In certain parts of north-west America, it’s believed water babies are a kind of reincarnation of the babies that were forcibly drowned by their respective mothers, due to a famine many years ago.And this is those babies’ revenge…”A shrug from the young subcontractor.

The three non-Indians looked upon each other with troubled faces.

“No offense, my friend,” Allen said after a while, “but that sounds just awful!”

“Look, I’m Washoe and I’m not sure I buy it.But it’s part of my Washoeness and I feel some obligation to help propagate the legend.”

“What about that stuffie,” Todd asked.“We never got to that part.”

All eyes were back on Lee.He was nodding, as if anticipating the question.

“I can only go base on what you, as a family, tell me…none of you gave your daughter that stuffed animal.Today was the first time I’ve been here, so count me out…”Another shrug.“Perhaps it was the water baby’s totem?And, finding some kind of attachment to your daughter, being that water babies are young themselves—and able to understand that she was a little girl—perhaps the water baby manifested its totem in a way that a child could understand?”

“Hmm,” Todd expressed.“Well, at least there’s some kind of logic in that.”

“So, what do we do now,” Valery demanded!

“I have to admit, Lee,” Allen came in, “I’d like all my tools and equipment back!”

“And our home back,” Todd interjected.

The young Washoe silently walked a few steps toward the house; thinking…

“Wait a minute,” Todd said; apprehension on his face.“You said some of the healers in ancient times gave offerings in exchange for powers…”

Now Valery and Allen shared alarmed looks!Valery shifted her attention to her husband.“Todd, we’re not sacrificing our daughter for a house!”

“Babe,” Todd responded, half-smiling, “I don’t think that’s what Lee was saying—”

“Of course not,” Lee said with a bit of defensiveness.

“I don’t see us moving for a legend, Lee,” Todd said.“How in the world do we deal with this?”

“Well…”Lee was thinking out loud as he looked at the three Jamesons.“There are four of us…no guarantee there could be a lot more than one in that room, or the whole house for that matter!I suppose we could try to rush it.”

Looks were exchanged.Valery was about to say something until she noticed that her mother’s van was heading their way.

“What’s your mom doing coming back with Nadeen,” Todd asked.

“I don’t know…why didn’t she try to call or text us?”

“Lee,” Allen said; a sudden thought occurring to him, “is it safe for them to be here?I mean, could the water baby—sense that a child is nearby?”

Lee thought for a bit and responded just before Valery’s mother made it to the house, “I have to admit that’s a good question I don’t have an answer to, my friend.”

Oddly, Valery’s mother was laughing out loud with the window of the passenger-side rolled down.Little Nadeen was seated there; laughing with her grandmother!All four were watching the two of them with bewilderment at such a time!

“Oh, my, Val, honey…Oh, hi, Todd and Allen!Hello, young man!”All four tacitly waved at Valery’s mother.“Val, sweetheart, Naddie told me about the stuffed animal I got for her a couple of months ago…since she couldn’t go with you to Australia, I felt so bad for her, so I sneaked into her room the night I babysat for you two and tried to surprise her with it!And I forgot to tell you about it!”

The duo in the van shared a laughing spell.Valery, Todd, Allen, and Lee all looked at each other.

“I was coming back to see what the emergency was,” Valery’s mother continued.“Oh, by the way, I’d keep the garage door shut from now on if I were you, Val and Todd.Neighbors have been complaining about a stray cat breaking into homes around here.”