The Forgiving

by Wesley McCraw

  How long had this poor woman been trapped up here? What trauma had she endured? It was too horrible to contemplate. Isabel tried to pull off one of the 2x4s, and Daniel tried to assist, but it was no use.

  “Stop,” Howard said. “There's an ax.”

  “What?” Isabel didn’t understand.

  Grip thought, All work and no play . . . He pictured the ax in the workroom. He pictured Jack Nicholson in The Shining hacking through the door to get at his wife and son.

  “By the fuse box,” Howard said. “We could get the ax, switch on the power.”

  “It’s too far,” Isabel said. But that wasn’t true. She pictured the route in her head. It would only take a few minutes to traverse. The real problem was that the route led directly through the lower hall, and the lower hall was evil. There was no denying it now, now that she'd seen some of the horrors of the house. Evil existed. It wasn’t just a metaphor.

  “It's only far if we all go,” Howard said. “Grip, you think you—”

  Isabel interrupted. “No.”

  “What about not splitting up?” Grip said.

  “It'll only take a few minutes,” Howard insisted. “We can do this. We need the ax. We can’t just leave her trapped here.”

  Isabel imagined Grip being swallowed by the darkness of the lower hall, swallowed by a demon with jagged teeth and a throat of broken glass. “I’ll go,” she said, trembling.

  “No,” Grip said. “I’ll do it. It sounds fun.” He'd rather die than let her go. He could see she was terrified.

  He set Howard on the carpet by the 2x4s and grabbed the flashlight. Isabel held on to it, shaking her head, though her refusal was hard to see because of the darkness.

  Grip pried her fingers loose. “I’ll be fine. After all, I have the protective charm. Remember?”

  Isabel realized she didn’t have the courage to go herself. She couldn’t even speak. She lowered to the floor by Howard.

  Howard adjusted his position, grunted with pain, and sucked in air. “Just hurry,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “You know me. Quick on my feet. Now in bed—”

  “You're stalling,” Howard said.

  “I'm going.”

  “God protect you.” Isabel surprised herself by getting the words out. God forgive me, but at least it’s Grip going and not me.

  Grip walked down the hall. Behind him in the darkness, Isabel recited Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures—” Grip flashed the light back to see her and Howard one last time. “—he leadeth me beside the still waters.” She looked to Howard. “Pray with me.”

  Little Daniel waved goodbye.

  Isabel and Howard said together, “He restoreth my soul.”

  Grip continued down the hall, leaving them to the dark. He'd be back. It wouldn’t take long. The flashlight shined through the open doorway at the end of the hall and highlighted the dead woman's naked back. The memory of her maggot-infested mutilation almost froze him, but his feet kept moving him forward. Panic rose as his lungs struggled for air.

  The prayer faded into the distance: “. . . he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk—” Grip turned the corner by the open door, the dead woman's shadow shifting against the back wall of the room. The prayer was almost inaudible now. He strained to listen. “—through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil: for thou art with me . . .”

  Now that Isabel and Howard were too far away to hear anymore, Grip freaked. As he continued down the next hall, he desperately clutched the charm at his neck. He wanted to believe in God, in His protection, but that wasn’t how the world worked. And even if the world worked that way everywhere else, that wasn’t how it worked here in Jacobi House.

  He passed the many closed doors—what’s behind all these closed doors?—and turned the next corner. He stopped. Unlike Isabel, he didn’t have a mental picture of the layout of the house. He feared he would turn the wrong corner and get lost. The flashlight would falter. The darkness would consume him.

  “Calm the fuck down!”

  The house wasn’t that big! Even if he made a wrong turn, he could just double back and find his way again.

  He kept moving forward and soon he stood at the top of the stairs. The light threw the shadow of the chandelier around the room. He pointed the flashlight down to the first floor and darted the beam back and forth. The front door was still closed. As far as he could tell, the towering room was empty.

  He quickly descended to the first floor and hurried without delay through the coatroom and into the front hall. Curtains fluttered into the light of his flashlight beam. A horrible chill stopped him in his tracks. Dread filled his chest, and he found it hard to breathe again. Some dark spirit was moving the curtains. He felt like he might have a heart attack.

  “Fuuuuuck,” he hissed at himself.

  He went back through the coatroom, back through the entry room, and into the cavernous chapel. The flashlight beam barely reached the glossy wood paneling to the left and right of him, the bar area remaining dark. He hurried forward; the brandy shined red in the light. He grabbed the bottle.

  Moaning came from inside the room. Not outside, right beside him. He spun and pointed the flashlight at the sound, at the fireplace. The wind moaned in the chimney. The damn wind sounded so malevolent and alive.

  He took a swift gulp of brandy. Liquid courage. He damn well needed courage now.

  With bottle in hand, he went back through the entry room, through the coatroom, down the front hall, brushing away the wafting curtains, and without hesitation, descended the three steps into the lower hall. As he proceeded forward, his dread made him frantic, quickly heightening to primal terror. He pointed the flashlight into any room with an open door. Shadows shifted as the light passed, but there was nothing in the rooms except piles of sticks and broken furniture. He couldn't catch his breath. Instead of slowing himself to calm down, he ran, his feet pounding the bouncy floorboards until he slammed into the door at the end of the hall.

  He opened the door. His flashlight beam reflected off the large windows of the workroom. He placed the brandy on the workbench to free up a hand and switched the breakers. The lights came back on just as before, with the workroom light illuminating in fits and starts.

  ◆◆◆

  The second-floor hallway lights came back on too. Isabel was crying. She and Howard sat together on the floor, leaning against the 2x4 wall, with Daniel between Isabel's legs, wrapped in her arms. Howard had been trying to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. The darkness had been total and absolute, and it had unhinged her.

  “It's okay,” he said. “See. Everything's fine. Grip switched on the breakers.”

  Isabel tried to control her panic with deep breathing and silent prayer. Please, God, keep Grip safe. Please! She hugged Daniel tight.

  ◆◆◆

  In the workroom, Grip shut the power box and rested back against it. He considered busting out the window with the ax and going around outside, but that was stupid. Outside wasn’t any safer. If the Puritan woman spotted him, she might shoot him in the head.

  He grabbed the bottle and took another chug. The power box was as cold against his back as the alcohol was warm in his chest. He tried to fit the brandy bottle in his pocket, but it was too big. He arranged it so he could hold the flashlight and brandy in one hand and the ax in the other.

  He imagined burying the ax in Howard’s skull. He imagined chopping off Isabel's hands. The images meant nothing, just fleeting thoughts. Impulses. After the hands were off, he would chop at her elbows and then at her shoulder joints.

  Just thoughts, nothing real, just synapses in the brain firing off because of all the trashy horror novels he’d read. In prison, he had read The Shining, Hell House, The Amityville Horror and a long list of splatter punk, and now he was trapped in a house with a history of insanity, and so he thought of horror. It didn’t mean anything.


  He would go back through the lower hall and be back with Howard and Isabel in a few minutes, even less time than that if he hurried, and everything would be okay.

  ◆◆◆

  Upstairs, the light helped tremendously to calm Isabel’s fears. She rocked with Daniel in her arms. Grip would be back upstairs, rounding the corner, any minute.

  “Come on, Grip,” she said. “Hurry up.” Grip’s return only required patience.

  “Grip's going to die,” Daniel said.

  “Shut up,” Howard said.

  “I'm sorry, Daddy.”

  “I said shut up.” Howard wasn’t one to get angry, but he was angry now.

  “Howard, stop. He's just a kid. He's traumatized.”

  Howard thought of the woman he had almost run over with his car. He had been mad at her too. It hadn’t been her fault either. She had cursed him for it: Damn you! Damn you to hell!

  A distant yelling sounded through the floor. Isabel and Howard held their breath to listen.

  “Help! Isabel! Howard! Help!” It was Grip, screaming in terror. “PLEASE HELP ME!”

  A final scream chilled their blood. Then nothing. Then the house creaked in the wind.

  1962

  Elsbeth Miller; an ex-wife, ex-secretary, and ex-sister; gave birth in the asylum to a boy with a birthmark on his shoulder. They took her son away. The identity of the father was unknown to her. The most likely candidate was the brute orderly that broke her voice box.

  Jeremy. What a horrible name!

  But it could have been the shy gangly orderly with the freckles that treated her kindly during the day but never accepted “no” at night. Terry. Terry Butterworth. Not that she could say “no” anymore. Or scream. She used to beg for her freedom. That seemed a long time ago. Maybe there were other men too, Roy and maybe Justin, when she was drugged. It seemed she was always drugged. Or maybe the doctor had impregnated her.

  When the rest of the asylum was quiet, Elsbeth could hear babies crying, so she knew her child was still on the premises. Tonight was unusually quiet. Quiet after a scuffle. After a murder. After all that spilling of blood, soaking and pooling.

  Elsbeth wore mint-colored elastic pants and a mint-colored shirt. All the committed wore mint. Her bare feet left bloody footprints on the carpet of the upstairs hallway.

  With the nurse dead at the end of the hall, slumped over her station as if just passed out, Elsbeth pulled down the stairs and climbed up into the uncomfortably warm attic. Bassinets in two long rows held sleeping babies. Her baby had a birthmark, so that’s what she searched for. A birthmark like a crescent moon. She had seen it on his shoulder before the nurse had taken him away. Not Darla, who was slumped over her desk, dead. Darla only worked nights. No. The day nurse with the red hair and big teeth. The one with the shrill laugh. Judy. Judy had taken her healthy, crying baby boy away, out of reach, out of sight, and then sedated her with a jab of a needle. Judy was still alive somewhere, probably in the suburbs in her own bed next to a husband, safe and sound. She would be back in the morning. It was best to be gone before she returned for her early shift.

  Elsbeth found her child near the end of the row, swaddled tightly in a cream-colored blanky. Two months old. Almost two feet long. So much bigger yet still so small.

  Elsbeth had been horribly weak since giving birth, and her baby boy felt heavy in her arms. Like a stone. Maybe it was the drugs. After all, he was still impossibly small. Such little fingernails. He couldn’t be much more than ten pounds.

  He didn’t have a name. He would have a name soon, but not here, not yet. Not in this accursed place. She wanted to coo but could only make a rasp through her sore throat. A fractured larynx, they had called it. They said it would get better with time. It hadn’t gotten better yet.

  Let the boy sleep. Let the innocent rest in her arms until they were away from this nightmare.

  Some of the other babies started to cry. They weren’t as well behaved as her precious angel. She would leave the other children behind, crying for their mothers. Wailing. She would leave behind, without guilt, the other patients too. Many of them were no more than vegetables. Lobotomy. Shock treatments. Bleedings. Scorching baths. Many wanted their babies dead. Demanded it from the nurses and the orderlies. They prayed to God to end it all, not just their suffering, but everything. The end of the world was possible. Azazel had corrupted the hearts of man, and there was a cold war, nuclear weapons pointed everywhere. Russia could end it all just as easily as God or America.

  With the stairs back in the ceiling and the crying children muted, the asylum was once again hushed.

  Near Elsbeth’s room, on the hall floor, a burly orderly named Brandon Smith had a broken broomstick piercing all the way through his chest, through his heart, and out his back. When he wasn’t prone on the carpet, he was more than six feet tall. Presently, he was facedown, the bristles of the broom soaked black and crushed under his weight. The blood had soaked the carpet too, of course. So much blood. She had stepped in it and tracked it around. His white orderly shirt was red everywhere. There were puncture holes where he had been stabbed in the back maybe five or six times.

  Darla down the hall was still slumped over her nurse’s station. Elsbeth fretted Darla might wake, but it was just paranoia. The drugs had done their job.

  It was the middle of the night or very early in the AM, and the rest of the staff was gone and wouldn’t be back until after dawn.

  Elsbeth considered staying until morning. She wanted to kill the rest of the staff. She wanted to lobotomize Dr. Jacobi, but the logistics were too complicated. She was too weak and didn’t really know how. Besides, she had a son to consider. And maybe if she stayed and killed the doctor, she would be caught, and Dr. Jacobi would be replaced with someone just as cruel. This was her chance to escape and make a new life for herself.

  There was a safe downstairs in the doctor’s office. She knew the combination. She had puzzled it out in just the last few days. Inside was enough money to start over.

  As she walked downstairs with her baby in her arms, she didn’t fear anything or anyone. Maybe it was the sedatives in her system. Or maybe it was her time in the asylum, numbing her to everything except true extremes. If someone chanced upon her, she would fight and kill whoever or die trying.

  Down the lower hall was Jacobi’s office. She had only seen the place once, but it had been seared into her memory. Dark wood. Bookcases with medical texts. A classical painting of a naked woman lounging on silk. A Tiffany lamp. Elsbeth had been bound and gagged, sitting next to her then-husband Christopher who had been signing papers, but she had seen the safe’s combination. All but one number. But the code, the string of numbers, was Dr. Jacobi’s son’s birthday, which was just last week. Proud papa Jacobi. Pride comes before the fall. Didn’t he know? Shouldn’t someone show him?

  She unlocked his office door with the keys she had pilfered from Brandon’s body and tip-toed in. As if there was anyone around to hear her. She crouched behind the doctor’s desk and used the numbers as she turned the dial left four times until the month, right three times until the day, left two times until the year. Then she turned the dial right until it stopped, at approximately ninety-five.

  It worked like a charm. She opened the safe and removed $20,000 in cash. There was more in there, piles of it, but she left the rest alone. Christopher had paid $20,000 to have her taken care of, no questions asked. She remembered the spicy cologne he had worn that day, not his usual. She remembered the way his blond hair was quaffed.

  Once she was out of the way, her husband had married her sister, Joanne, but they were both dead now, so it didn’t really matter. The day nurses gossiped. They seemed to think that the drugged and catatonic couldn’t overhear. Both Christopher and Joanne had died in a car crash shortly after the honeymoon. Chris had always been an atrocious driver so it wasn’t that big of a surprise.

  It gave Elsbeth no joy that her dolt ex-husband and her airy sister were dead. Chris, no d
oubt, genuinely believed Elsbeth was crazy, maybe even thought this place was the best thing for her. The asylum had been new and shiny. Just opened. And she had an unacceptable anxiety that was often crippling. She feared The Bomb and social gatherings to an equal degree. She feared nuclear winter. She feared a black uprising. She feared the government. She didn’t want to bring a baby into such a tumultuous world. She was the first to admit that she was hard to deal with, and Chris had been the first to agree. Joanne would have made the better wife. She was docile. She wouldn’t have made Chris feel incompetent. She wanted a baby. She trusted things would turn out right in the end.

  It also gave Elsbeth no joy that Brandon, the orderly, and Darla, the night nurse, were dead.

  Darla, homely, with thin, wispy, auburn hair and a nasal voice, had killed herself and left a rambling suicide note with phrases like “up the creek,” “word from the bird,” and “what the frig!” It was understandable that Darla, when she had first started here at the asylum, had tried to turn a blind eye. She only worked here as a way to provide for her ailing mother. Eventually, though, this place had gotten to her. It had made her feel guilty. “The word from the bird” was that the asylum had stained her soul and that the stain wouldn’t come out. There were babies in the attic and children buried out back. She hadn’t discovered yet what happened in the basement, hadn’t wanted to know, but she had suspected it was far worse than anything that happened above ground. So when her mother had finally died from a lung infection, Darla no longer had a reason to go on living and overdosed on some drugs the asylum always had on hand. The last thing she wrote: “See you later, alligator.”

  Darla was a victim, in some ways. Wasn’t she? Elsbeth pitied her. Forgave her.

  The orderly, Brandon, now dead on the hall floor upstairs, had been something of a misguided hero. He was a veteran. He had lived through WWII, had lived through a mental breakdown of his own only a few years back, and he was dead because of Elsbeth. He had reported one of her rapists to the doctor. “Snitches got stitches,” as they say.