Bone Chimes

by Kristopher Rufty

  What surprised her more was she hated her husband back. Maybe she always had. Would explain why she’d treated him so poorly for so many years. Thinking back on it now, she’d treated him as if he were the village idiot, a man-sized child. Usually she reminded him of this in front of people.

  Such a bitch, at times.

  So what! And that gets me this!

  She tried tugging at the layers of tape. Her arms didn’t budge. Her shoulders didn’t budge. She couldn’t feel them. It was as if her arms had been severed. She hoped there wouldn’t be any kind of permanent damage, then decided it didn’t matter. She wasn’t getting out of here.

  Letting her head drop on the pillow, she stared at the ceiling. Jon’s room was right above her. Ernest was in there. He’d yelled a few times earlier, so that meant he was very much alive. Harold went up there and muffled him somehow. At times, she could hear him grunting through the ceiling, or some banging that she assumed came from him stomping the floor. Harold must not have put him on the bed. Probably couldn’t lift him. Harold wasn’t necessarily strong. Getting him up there probably had been a feat he’d barely managed to accomplish.

  Closing her eyes, Melanie hoped sleep would come quickly, putting another day of this nightmare behind her, another day closer to her death. She wondered if she should feel upset about that. Probably. But she wasn’t exactly feeling much of anything other than betrayal.

  Just as she was starting to doze off, her bladder nudged her. Melanie began to cry, knowing she’d have to call for Harold to bring her a bowl. It was the bowl that had come from her grandmother. She’d used it to mix up cookie batter and that was what Melanie used it for also. Worse than the humiliation of Harold holding it between her legs and wiping her when she was done was knowing that her family heirloom was ruined.

  Melanie sucked her sobs down, took many gulps, and let out a long breath.

  Then she called for Harold.

  Voices shocked Melanie awake.

  The room was heavy in darkness, only a meager silvery glow managed to push through the thick curtains.

  Laughing. And not just Harold. She heard somebody else.

  A girl.

  “Oh, you are a tiger, aren’t you?” she said between chortles.

  “I’m learning more about myself every day,” said Harold.

  For some reason, this statement elicited a wild round of squeaky laughter from the girl. Melanie heard footfalls coming toward the bedroom.

  “Are you sure she won’t mind?” the girl asked.

  “Not at all. I told you—it’s her fantasy.”

  What the hell’s going on now?

  The door swung open. The light switch clicked and the room was blasted with light that hurt Melanie’s eyes. Harold entered, smiling. He looked down at Melanie and his smile fell away slightly. “Awake?”

  “What do you think?” she asked in a raspy voice. Her throat felt as if she’d gargled with cotton—dry and sore.

  Harold, still giving her that smile, nodded. “Let me get you some water.” He stepped out of the room. Melanie could hear the girl whispering something to him. “It’s fine. She’s thirsty. Give us a few minutes. Make yourself comfortable in my office.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s right over there,” he said.

  “I see it,” said the girl in a sing-song voice, making her sound even younger. Laughing, her feet made prancing taps on the floor as she dashed away. “Mind if I snort some of this?”

  Harold was quiet a moment before saying, “If that’s what you like to do, then so be it.”

  The girl, who sounded more like a bubbly teenager, laughed.

  Harold brings a girl into our home? And she’s on drugs?

  Was Harold suffering some kind of mental crisis? It made sense, kind of. Now he was getting out of control.

  Harold returned a short while later with a glass of water and another folding straw hooked on the rim. “Here,” he said, sitting.

  Melanie raised her head, forming her lips around the straw. She ignored Harold’s aroused stare as he watched her drink. Though she wanted to guzzle the water, she knew better. Last time, she’d nearly drowned herself. She took slow, heavy gulps. When the glass was halfway empty, she pulled back.

  Harold set the glass on her nightstand.

  “What have you done now?” she asked.

  “Are you talking about Starla?”

  “Starla?” Harold nodded. “That’s her name?” Another nod. “What is she, a prostitute?”

  “Something of the sort.”

  Melanie should have been shocked, but she wasn’t. “You brought a whore into our house?”

  Nose wrinkled, Harold pressed his lips tightly together. “Not a nice word, dear. A paid companion is a much gentler, and appropriate, term.”

  Melanie, mouth gaping, couldn’t speak. She made coughing sounds as she tried to force the words out.

  Standing, Harold began pacing alongside the bed. “This may sound crazy, but please hear me out. I was thinking about it last night and at first I couldn’t believe I was even considering it, but you know what? The more I thought it out, the more it just made sense to me.” He stopped pacing, turned to face Melanie. “I’m going to have sex with her while you watch.”

  “Harold!”

  “It’s okay. I told her you’re into it. She likes women too, so it should be really fun. I told her it was okay to mess around with you, too.”

  There was a loud banging sound from deeper in the house.

  Harold spun around, a look of concern on his face. Now he looked like the man she’d known all these years as he ran out of the room.

  Melanie listened as Harold called for Starla. Starting off playful, his tone quickly turned urgent. Then there was a beat of silence before Harold shouted.

  Melanie’s skin went prickly. Something was wrong. Something had happened that Harold hadn’t prepared for during one of his shower planning sessions.

  The bedroom door flung wide. Harold entered, eyes wide and roaming, mouth opened into a pained grimace.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked behind the gag.

  Harold paused just inside the room, looking this way and that. “She’s dead.”

  Melanie shivered. She knew who he was talking about.

  “Throat slit in the living room. Looked like she was robbing us when somebody…” He shook his head. “She had a bag with things from my office stuffed inside.

  “She’s dead?”

  Harold nodded. His eyes snapped wide. “Ernest!” He charged out of the room. She heard him running through the house, the pounding of his shoes on the stairs at the end of the hall. The ceiling began to creak and groan as he moved up the second-floor hall.

  Ernest’s loose!

  Though Harold hadn’t confirmed it, Melanie knew it was true. When Harold yelled above her, she knew it for certain. She didn’t know how he’d gotten free, nor did she care. Fact of the matter—he was loose in the house!

  Melanie jerked her arms back and forth. The tape held. Each movement sent static-like pain through her arms. Her hands were numb.

  There was a loud crash above her that shook the house. The overhead light swayed, throwing bouncy streaks across the walls that reminded Melanie of the sun reflecting off a lake. The chains holding the light jingled quietly.

  Harold grunted. A muffled smacking sound followed. Another crash, things clattered. She heard a sweeping tumble start on one side and work its way to the other. Somebody was being dragged.

  They’re fighting.

  Harold screamed. His screams turned to hollers of pain as they began to fade. Just below those sounds was another: the unremitting wet punching that carried on well after Harold’s screams had stopped.

  From outside, crickets chirped, their melodies drifting into the house. It seemed odd and out of place, such a peaceful backdrop to the violence that had just happened upstairs.

  The soft thump of Jon’s door closing came through the ceiling. Lethargic footsteps
followed, making their way to the stairs, then down them. Melanie held her breath, listened. The steps stopped when they reached the floor.

  Faintly, she heard the huffs of heavy breathing.

  Then the footsteps started up again, heading her way.

  Melanie nearly attempted another go at getting her arms free. There was no use. Ernest had done too great of a job at winding the tape. She was stuck here. No place to go, nothing to do, but wait for him to enter.

  And he did, a few moments later. Still dressed in his navy blue coveralls, he walked into the room. His beard looked mussed and tangled. He had a black eye and it looked as if his head had been bandaged. She wondered if he’d done that himself at some point, or Harold had done it.

  In his hand was Jon’s hunting knife. Though Jon had only gone hunting a few times, he’d wanted the knife. It had a large blade, bowed tip for wrenching out entrails. It was soaked in blood, as was Ernest’s hand. His sleeve was streaked in dark, wet lines. She even noticed some spattered patterns on his face and brow that had turned pink from his sweat.

  Shoulders rising and dropping, Ernest looked around the room. His eyes moved all over, scanning. They came to a stop on her. This time, he looked her in the eye.

  “Anybody else sneaking around the house?” he asked in a winded voice.

  Melanie shook her head.

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  “All right.” He stepped over to the bed, switching the knife to his other hand. He stroked her thigh. “There it is…” He took a deep breath. “What say we start back where we left off, now that there won’t be any more interruptions.”

  Melanie wanted to cry, wished she could cry. But there was nothing left inside. She felt numb as Ernest climbed onto the bed.

  Story Notes:

  Probably the darkest one of the bunch. I’d had the idea for this story for a long time, but I always thought it would be longer, maybe a novella. I was asked to contribute to a German anthology that was being edited by one of my favorites, Edward Lee, for German publisher, Festa-Verlag. They took the German rights and I held onto the English rights, thinking I might not ever release it anywhere in the states. Sometimes, my stories get ripped apart for their violence and I wondered if this one might have taken things a bit too far. It didn’t take long before I decided to get over myself and stop worrying about it. The story is just fine and I like it, a lot. I don’t feel too guilty for writing it.

  Gearhart’s Wife

  John Gearhart.

  No way it’s the same guy.

  But how many John Gearharts could there possibly be? Sure, the first name was very ordinary, but how common could the last name possibly be? Gearhart. And how many people could possibly have both names, and not be the one Tobe hoped him to be.

  Tobe Crooks couldn’t think of anyone else other than the John Gearhart, the man who’d directed a bale of exploitation movies in the late seventies before graduating to gory splatter movies in the eighties.

  The only John Gearhart he’d ever heard of.

  What am I gonna do if the door opens and it’s actually him?

  Probably piss his pants, and spend another hour awkwardly apologizing for the ammonia-like smell while the horror legend signed his home refinance papers.

  That was Tobe’s job—taking paperwork from title companies to the borrowers to be signed, then notarizing their signatures to make it legal. He was frequently introduced to an array of houses and living conditions and not one of them was ever identical. And the pets! Tobe liked pets, his family even owned some, but he’d been in some houses where the pets were running the lot, and not the owners. There was one evening where he’d been subjected to having to watch a toddler roll around on the floor in cat puke stains. As much as he’d wanted to ask how they could let their kid play in filth and cat excrement, he couldn’t say a word. It was his job to go in, smile, and no matter what the environment was, he had to represent the lending companies in a positive light.

  A glorified paperboy who had to suck it up and shut up.

  He’d been doing the job for over a year now, and this was the most excitement he’d experienced. The possibility of meeting one of his favorites in the genre, a true icon in the horror world. His stomach buzzed with anxiety, a nice change from his drab work routine. He felt like all he did anymore was drive, stop at gas stations long enough to pump a small fortune into the tank, buy a cherry Dr. Pepper and some kind of beef jerky, and then drive some more. To say he was getting tired of it was a meek interpretation.

  Typically, when he was at home his family wasn’t. His three kids would be in school, his wife at work, leaving it his responsibility to be the housekeeper since Kaylyn had to handle all the evening parental duties herself. He often became lonely, cranky, and his temper’s fuse was about as long as a grass seed. The job had lost its new car smell, and he needed to swap out the car fresheners almost daily.

  He’d had a love for horror movies for as long as he could remember. But he wasn’t exactly sure when it began. It’d just always been there. He’d even contemplated a career making his own films. It had been easier when he was younger to take a video camera and a group of friends into the woods to record some kind of short, gory picture. It had been a lot of fun. Eventually, his friends lost interest. And without the motivation his friends had offered and the support they’d given him, his desire to make horror movies quickly diminished. His parents had been encouraging enough while he was growing up, but as he got older, inspirational talks became less about the art of making movies and more about the security of growing up and getting a real job.

  He slowed the Jeep as he neared a four-way intersection.

  “In point-seven miles, turn right onto Windy Circle Drive,” said the husky, android-like voice of the GPS. He’d named her Felicia, for no reason other than he thought she sounded like one.

  His stomach cramped.

  Almost there.

  The drive had been agonizingly long, yet had seemed to zip by too quickly. Checking the clock on the console, he saw he’d been driving for just over an hour and was almost to the destination. He wasn’t prepared. He needed to figure out what he was going to say without coming off as a weirdo fan-boy. Tobe was going to be in his house and if this was the John Gearhart, then he would probably be skeptical of having someone who knew who he was in his home and having such intimate access to all his personal information. He might even think Tobe had somehow intentionally planned this.

  But if it was the John Gearhart, what was he doing in North Carolina? Tobe knew at one point he’d resided in Georgia, which was where the majority of his films took place. He supposed he could have moved. It had been nearly fifteen years since the man had made a movie, so it was very plausible that he’d retired from the movie business and settled here.

  The GPS reminded him his turn was forthcoming, so he slowed the car down, checking his mirrors for cars. He saw none, nor had he seen any in a good while. It had been only his car on this stretch of blacktop with nothing but countryside all around.

  Tobe steered the Jeep into Windy Circle and stopped at the mouth of the gravel road. It sketched through the woods and looked as if it might go on forever. Was this the right place? He put the car in park, and double checked the address on the confirmation sheet he’d gotten from the title company.

  111 Windy Circle Drive.

  Tobe checked the faded wooden sign sitting at an angle along the side of the road. The names matched. This was the right place.

  He rolled the window down. It had recently rained, and the late spring air outside was thick and sticky. With his head poking out through the open space, he looked from right to left. He’d expected to find a plank of mailboxes, or possibly a stake with house numbers nailed to it, but he found nothing other than the aging road sign.

  Maybe this is his driveway. Not a road.

  The GPS showed him the distance left to travel was two miles. On the screen were thick green blotches around the pu
rple line for the road that suggested woodland would barricade him once he drove inward.

  Sighing, Tobe put the Jeep in gear, and started forward. He left the window down, enjoying the wind brushing his cheek and the sweet smell of the damp woods. He could hear gravel popping under his tires.

  As he traveled, the woods seemed to close in around the Jeep, pressing tighter on him as if the limbs wanted to reach in and snatch him out. He stared at the leafy, low-hanging branches. He supposed they did resemble big green hands. Although he knew they wouldn’t start groping at him, he rolled up the window.

  The air coming from the vents suddenly felt too cold on his dampening skin. He could feel the inklings of a chill squirming up his spine. He turned the AC down to low. Then he noticed the house marker, its golden numbers twinkling in the shadowed area under the trees. 111. He kept on, following the gravel road through the woods.

  Finally, the path opened up on a two story, log cabin-style home with a wall of woods behind it. The trees crowded around the wooden structure, their thick arms held out as if trying to keep anyone from seeing the house behind them. There was a decent-sized yard in the back, neatly cut grass on each side, and a three-door garage sitting off to the left that wasn’t connected to the house. A Ford Escape was parked at an angle in front.

  It was a cozy, yet capacious place. Just the kind of home Tobe had always dreamed of owning himself. He parked the Jeep behind the Escape and twisted the key, killing the engine. He patted his pocket to make sure his cell phone was in there. It was. Then he grabbed his briefcase from the backseat and stepped out of the car.

  The air felt like a heated moist blanket on his skin. The chills he’d had were gone, and now he could feel sweat under his shirt. If he started sweating, he wouldn’t stop. Hopefully John Gearhart, whether he was the one he hoped he was or not, had air-conditioning cranked to high.

  Sunlight reflected off the beads of dew dotting the grass. Tobe could see mist curling along the trees, making its way into the yard as evening approached and brought cooler temperatures with it. He quickly crossed the graveled driveway, and climbed the wooden steps to the porch. An eave was above him and followed the length of the porch around to the side of the house. Planters hung from hooks with vibrantly colored vines growing out of them. He’d never seen such plants before and wondered what they were. Kaylyn liked to dabble in gardening, but usually that entailed the slow slaughter of credulous plant breeds. These that hung all around were lovely flora, and he’d like to have some decorating their house.