The Maddening

by Andrew Neiderman

  “We’ll get out. It’s all right; it’s okay now.” He studied the lock on the chain and followed the chain to the bedpost. For a moment he thought about pounding it with the hammer, but then he realized he didn’t have much time.

  Stacey took a deep breath and tried to get more control of herself. Cutting through her intense and frenzied thinking, she realized what David had to do.

  “Lift the bed and slide the chain down,” she said. “I’ll help you do it. It’s the fastest way.”

  “Okay,” he said. He put the hammer down and took hold of the side of the bed. He was afraid he wouldn’t have the strength to lift it with her still on it. He was drained from the efforts to escape out of the well the night before and from the fight with the man. He wished he could brace himself on both legs.

  Stacey leaned over the bed as he lifted. She pushed the chain down as quickly as she could, but he couldn’t hold the bed up long enough for her to get it out from under the post. He had to rest, take a few deep breaths, and try again. This time the chain on her right leg slipped free of the post.

  Because her right leg was no longer chained to the bed, she was now able to slide to the left and slip off the bed. She knelt beside the bed as David came around to lift the left end and free the other chain.

  As Stacey began to work the chain down the post before he lifted the bed, David had a moment to digest more of the situation. Naked and crouched, her hair disheveled, Stacey appeared creaturelike even in this subdued lighting. The only illumination was coming from the hall. The boarded windows made him feel as though he had entered a dungeon. His heart went out to her as he imagined the horror she obviously had gone through over the last few days.

  The chain caught on the post. She grunted and clawed at it wildly. He got down on his knees and seized her wrists.

  “Wait. Let me try,” he said. She looked at him and as if for the first time she acknowledged his presence. By working the chain, he was able to free it. It fell to the floor. All he would have to do is lift the bed and she could slide it out from under the post. “All right,” he said, “get ready.”

  He positioned his hands and braced himself for this one last expenditure of effort, but before he could attempt it, something eclipsed the weak light that fell in the room.

  He turned slowly and saw Gerald Thompson looming in the doorway. With the light behind him, his face looked ghoulish. He appeared like a hooded executioner. David’s heart went cold and he released his grip on the bed with a groan.

  Remarkably, Stacey did not scream. It was as though she had been drained of all emotion at last. She looked up at the dark figure towering above them as would one who had suffered a lobotomy. She faced him with a sense of inevitable doom. This was their fate. David’s arrival and their struggle had all been part of a wishful dream, the mind’s attempt to block out certain death. In a few moments it would all be over. She almost welcomed their fate; she thought she was too tired for any more struggle and for any more hope.

  As soon as Gerald had recovered his senses, the pain in his knee drove him into a rage. Like some kind of insect, the man had stung him. He felt the same kind of frustration he usually felt whenever a bee or a mosquito bit him. The creature was so tiny he could crush it in an instant, but not before bringing great pain and discomfort.

  He had always been this way. Even as a child, he found it both satisfying and necessary to kill all the spiders and ants he could find, as well as mosquitoes and bees. Sometimes, when he had no chores, he would go on insect hunts and kill as many as he could.

  He had always resented men like the man who had sneaked into his house. Despite their size and physical weakness in comparison to him, they were still somehow superior; and it wasn’t just because they were smarter or made more money. There was something inherently better about them. He could see it in their eyes whenever they looked at him or in the eyes of others whenever he stood next to one.

  They knew they were better. He had first been stung in grade school, sitting beside boys like Lawrence Benton or Bobby Kaufman. He saw it in the way the teacher looked at them and then looked at him. They were always verbally stroked; the teacher appreciated them. He was merely tolerated. As far as he knew, he had done nothing to provoke the response.

  He realized they would have expected him to have a baby like Arthur. They would understand why his son was terminally ill the moment he was born. To them it was nature reinforcing what they already knew: people like Gerald were freaks, mistakes that had fallen through the cracks of humanity. It wouldn’t happen again. Nature would see to that.

  Only he cheated nature, didn’t he? He took away the satisfaction she would have when Arthur’s puny life was finally ended. He ended it; he defied nature as well as them. Behind their facade of sympathy, he saw their smug looks of satisfaction. After all, everything they believed had been reinforced. Or so they thought. He knew better. He knew he was still in control.

  Here on the farm, in his world, he was the one who would make the life-and-death decisions; and this insect of a man who had come at him in the same manner as an insect would suffer an insect’s violent death. He would crush him as he would crash a spider, right here on the floor of this bedroom.

  The shovel glimmered in his big hand.

  He had come up from the basement as quickly as he could, limping, but ignoring the pain. He saw Irene and Shirley at the top of the stairs looking toward the bedroom, and he knew that the man and the woman were still here. They were within his reach.

  Irene looked horrified, but he wasn’t concerned about her feelings. He was concerned about himself. Later he would deal with her. She should have known that child had left her bedroom anyway. She bore some blame for this mess.

  He stepped into the doorway and glared down at them squatting beside the bed. He saw that the woman still had one leg incapacitated. The house had slowed them down. His father had joined forces with the house, directing it to let Gerald get within inches of success. He regained his confidence. Everything would be all right. He caught his breath, clenched his hands into fists the size of small sledgehammers, one gripped around the shovel’s handle, and stepped forward.

  David rose slowly on his one good leg.

  Chicky Ross strode up the front steps to the doorway of the sprawling Victorian farmhouse, the jutting lines and corners picturesque from afar, but up close weathered and in need of repair. He paused and looked around the yard. There was something about the stillness that bothered him even more as he approached the house. There were no birds flitting through the trees; the leaves remained unstirred; and the air was motionless, like the air before a tornado. Everything looked painted on canvas. It was as if time had been put on pause with a video recorder. In a moment the Great Operator would press a button and the future would come rushing onto the screen.

  Setting aside his discomfort, he looked for a buzzer by the door and found he had to open the screen door to get at the metal knocker. The mechanism shone as new as the day it had been attached, a clue that few people ever came calling. He rapped against the brass plate and listened to the hollow echo of the sound reverberate inside. Was the house empty? No one responded.

  After a moment he rapped again and then strolled to a front window and peered in at what was obviously a living room. There was no one there. He went back to the door and rapped again. Finally, he called out.

  “Hello? Anyone around?”

  He waited, but there was still no response. He tried the door, but it was locked. He realized there were no houses between this one and the end of Willow Road. Frustrated, he considered the walk back to the garage. The distance seemed insurmountable; it would make for a considerably longer delay. Maybe he should go in the other direction and get to a phone, he thought.

  “Dammit,” he muttered and walked off the porch. He stood looking up at the house for a moment and then decided to go around and see if he could find anyone.

  As soon as he reached the rear, he stopped and stared at the
backhoe parked right beside the house. The shovel had been lowered on what was obviously a basement door. It looked as though it had been lowered so fast and so hard that it had dented the metal door.

  “Why the hell would anyone do that?” he muttered and waited as if he were waiting for an answer from an invisible partner.

  He looked up at the barn and listened. He thought he heard something from within it. He could hear the chickens in the chicken house to the right and he saw two cows grazing between that and the barn. Otherwise everything was still, yet it felt like the stillness before a storm and not the stillness of a peaceful rural scene.

  His curiosity piqued, he walked to the barn and pushed the door slightly ajar so he could squeeze through and enter. He stood there for a moment, listening.

  “Anyone around? Hello?”

  Something at the rear of the barn caught his attention. He pushed the barn door open farther so he could let in more light and then walked to the back. When he got there, his face flushed. This was the car David Oberman’s wife drove; it had the license plate and fit the description. Someone had begun to tear it apart. The hood and the door on the passenger side had been unhinged and all of the tires had been removed. Everything had been piled neatly in front and to the left of it.

  “Why the hell…”

  He spun around quickly: did he hear voices? After he listened carefully for a moment, he heard nothing. Even so, he moved slowly back to the barn door and peered out. There was still no one in sight. Then he thought he heard a woman’s voice off to the right, but from this position he could see no one.

  What the hell was this? he wondered. What the hell was going on here?

  He came out of the barn and struck back toward the rear of the farmhouse. When he got to the back porch steps, he paused again. There were definitely voices off to the right, but the sound of them was drifting away. Someone, some people, had gone over that small hill. They must be moving quickly, he thought.

  “Hello,” he shouted and listened. There was no response. He cupped his hands at his mouth and called in the direction of the voices. “Hello, this is the police. Anyone here?”

  There was no answer. He considered going after them but then decided he would try the house one more time before going off in pursuit. He walked up the steps to the back door and turned the handle. This door opened into a small pantry. He went through quickly and entered the kitchen.

  “Anyone home? This is the police,” he repeated. The deep silence urged him to draw his pistol. He did so and released the safety.

  He started farther into the house. He stopped by the open basement door and peered in and down the steps. He thought he heard someone down there so he started to descend, pausing midway. When he looked to the left, he froze in shock. Was that an open coffin…in someone’s basement?

  Before he had time for another thought he heard what could be none other than a woman’s scream. Turning quickly, he ran up the basement steps and headed for the stairway leading upstairs. When he reached the first step, he heard the sounds of pounding and grunting. For some reason the noise made him think of the counter area in a butcher shop.

  Both cautious and intrigued, he began his ascent up the stairway, his gun still drawn, his heart pounding.

  15

  David remembered once getting into a fight with someone much bigger than himself. He was a junior in high school then. Actually, it was the first real fight he had ever had. Like any other boy attending a public school, he had his share of physical confrontations, which consisted mostly of a few pushes and taps. Before his fight in high school, however, he couldn’t recall ever really striking another boy with closed fists. Of course, he had seen other fights and he had been fascinated by violence the way any adolescent is, but his father was not a violent man. From him David had inherited patience and toleration; from his mother he had gotten a faith in the power of reason and intelligence.

  He was witty and quick and could usually belittle antagonists sharply enough to come out looking superior and not cowardly. But Billy Potter was too stupid, or rather too abused at home to understand anything but a physical reprimand. The argument was petty; it was over a seat in the lunch room, and David was willing to give it up, making the trophy look insignificant in the process.

  Billy was a relatively new student in the school, having attended it for only two years, whereas David had spent all of his academic life there. The other students around him favored him and applauded the way he handled Billy Potter. Potter, frustrated by David’s retreat, even though he didn’t understand, pursued. In his world smaller and weaker people were supposed to grovel, not look and act superior when backing away. This wasn’t backing away; this was something else, some kind of underhanded warfare.

  He continued to press David, backing him up with short, sharp punches to the shoulder and chest. The lunch room was crowded and the teacher supervisors were busy in the hallways as students lined up to get their food. None of the other students would come to David’s aid, either: Potter was too big.

  When David didn’t respond to the short, sharp punches, Potter began to slap him in the face with an open hand. It was a funny thing about a slap. A punch was obviously more physically detrimental, but a slap carried an insult with it. The quick, snappy sound drew more attention and reddened David’s face. Potter was indeed belittling him.

  David never understood from where his temper erupted. But suddenly, without any warning, he swung out instinctively and struck Potter just under the tip of his nose. The blow was dramatic, even though it wasn’t very hard. It produced an instant letting of blood, shocking everyone, including David himself.

  Potter responded with some vicious punches, catching David on the shoulder and neck, but David was able to block most of them before the fight was finally over. Potter was the one led off bleeding, even though both of them were taken to the dean for disciplinary action. David recalled the half smile on the dean’s face. It was as though David had finally proved himself to be a normal boy.

  Of course, his parents weren’t happy. But during the days that followed, Potter kept his distance and David sensed a new respect from other boys in his class. He was far from ready to accept the violent way as the right way, but well stored in his mind was the memory of the success and the self-respect it had brought.

  The memory lay dormant through the years since, waiting like a sleeping beast.

  Now Gerald Thompson came toward him, a heavy, discolored shovel in his hand. He paused and let a grin spread across his face. He flung the shovel down, letting it clatter to the floor, and balled his hands into fists. Despite the fact of the shovel, David Oberman found the rage well within him again. Just as soon as Gerald was in range David struck out. The blow caught the big man unaware. He thought David would cower and beg for mercy.

  David hit him in the mouth, driving his lower lip into his teeth. Gerald tasted his own blood. Like a vampire driven by the scent and flavor, he went into a rage and rushed forward, striking David hard on the left side of his neck. The punch nearly snapped his neck, whipping him to the side and off the bed.

  Gerald brought his left fist down, pounding the floored David and nearly knocking the breath out of him. Then he reached forward to grasp David by the neck and pull him up. The man was everything Gerald was not—polished, wealthy, successful. He would enjoy beating him to a pulp, and then watch as his face collapsed when the shovel shattered his skull. David kicked out with his good leg, but he was unable to make contact.

  When David fell over the bed, however, he felt the hammer he had laid there just before lifting the side of the bed to free his wife. His hands closed around the handle and when Gerald bent down again to seize him around the neck, David struck him on the side of the head with the hammer.

  The blow was severe enough to send Gerald reeling. He staggered and raised his arm to protect himself from another blow. David flailed out wildly now, and only grazed the big man. The blow was enough to drive Gerald off balance
and to his knees beside the bed. He reached up in time to catch the hammer in midair before David could land another blow.

  They struggled like that for a few moments, and then Gerald’s foot caught on a bed post and he toppled to the floor. David brought the hammer down quickly onto the hulking man’s head, and when he fell back dazed, David struggled to his feet and limped to the bedside where the chain was hinged, catching his breath first. He heaved the bed up and shoved the chain aside. It scraped across the floor, free. “Quick!” he gasped, to his stunned wife. “Get out!”

  “David, hit him again,” she cried hysterically at the figure of Gerald, now gripped with pain on the floor. “He raped me! He raped me!”

  David seized her arm, and pushed her toward the door. “Get out now, I’ll take care of this,” he said, waving his arm as she skidded across the mattress to the other side. She looked wild-eyed. Remembering the chain was still clasped to her foot, she reeled the chain in quickly and hurried past David into the hallway before Gerald could regain his senses. David, recovering his breath, began to hop past him, bracing himself against the hall wall as he went.

  But before he reached the stairway, Gerald was up again. He reached forward and seized David’s right arm, spinning him around violently. He plucked the hammer from David’s hand with ease and then drove his big fist into the side of David’s face. Stacey was already three-quarters of the way down. She looked up and screamed as David teetered ominously at the top of the long stairway.

  Gerald raised the hammer intending to bring it down on David’s skull. His vision of the man’s face collapsing inward returned. Maybe he could use the shovel later to deepen the wound. The hammer would rid him, at the least, of the man for now. And there was always the woman and the girl…A grin spread across his face, and to David it appeared like the grin of death. Stacey screamed again and reached upward as if she could help her husband by merely pointing at Gerald.