"Hey!" Katie called out to them as quietly as she could while still being audible.
One of the young men knocked the other on the shoulder and pointed up to the second-floor window. "Look, up there!"
"Aw, who's that?" the other one asked, taking a few steps back and holding a ridged hand over his eyes as if that would do anything to help him see. "Is that a chick? It sounded like a chick."
The black cat stood by their ankles, staring up at them and periodically meowing as if urging them to be helpful.
"Help me, please!" Katie whispered to them.
"Help? What do you need help with, baby girl?"
"Call the police!"
"The what?"
"The police!"
"Girl, you're crazy. You don't call the police on a party, don't you know that? What kind of square are you?"
Katie looked over her shoulder at the shadows looming behind her, feeling an intense sense of impending doom, like the walls of time and opportunity were closing in on her.
"He's got me locked up in here!" she said. "I think he's going to kill me! You have to get me out of here!"
Her words started to cut through the drunken boorishness of the two men and their tone became somber.
"Are you really trapped in there?" one of them asked.
"Yes."
Suddenly feeling brave under the attention of a female (though he couldn't tell how attractive she was yet), the second one rolled up his sleeves. "Don't worry, girl, I'll come get you. How do I get in there?"
"Please, just call the police!" Katie implored. "The front door is bolted. I don't know if you can get in there."
"A window, then," he said, looking around on the ground for a rock and not at all noticing that every window was covered in iron bars.
The other one took out his cell phone, his eyes carefully resting on Katie. She couldn't see his expression in the darkness, but she felt that it was sobered and concerned as he began to truly take in the disturbing qualities of the house for the first time.
"Yes, please," Katie said, "just call the police and wait until they get—"
Katie screamed.
The head of the axe cleaved through the night and sank into the back of the one fiddling with his phone. Something like a muffled gurgle came out of his throat and his cell phone slipped out of his fingers. He sank to his knees and Earl put his boot on the young man's back and pried the axe out of his flesh.
The other one spun around and saw him, immediately panicking and falling onto his ass. He scrambled on the ground like a crab, stuffing his hand in his pocket for something. He pulled out a pocketknife, using his legs to push himself away from Earl as he struggled to unfold the blade. Earl marched toward him and the boy was terrified at how fast he moved. His sweaty fingers slipped on the blade and Earl was upon him. Terrified, he flung an arm over his head. "Oh God, no!"
Earl brought the axe down and cut into his forearm, breaking his bones. The young man let out a bloodcurdling scream as he tried to scramble away and defend himself at the same time. But Earl was right on top of him and launched blow after blow onto his body.
Katie went so pale with terror that the next scream couldn't even escape through her tightened windpipe as anything more than a squeak. She threw her hands over her face and turned away from the window as the sounds of the man's screams and his body being hacked apart filled the warm night.
When it was over and the screams were snuffed out, there was silence.
Katie pulled her hands away from her face and inched up to the window, perching an eyeball above the bottom of the frame and glancing out.
Earl stood over the bodies, holding the dripping axe in his hands and looking down at what he'd done. Then his neck craned and his eyes fell on hers.
The Axeman Cometh
Earl's eyes burned in the night. They were the one defining feature on his face that she could make out in the darkness. The only other thing piercing through her shellshocked conscious mind to her subconscious was the axe held in his hands with the slow drip of blood off the corner onto the grass below.
When Katie finally found her motor functions again she pulled herself away from the window. She barely made it to the bed before collapsing on it and vomiting.
He had done it. He had actually done it. No longer was Earl just some deranged loner willing to kidnap for his own twisted pleasure; he was a cold-blooded murderer, willing to do anything to keep her from escaping. And if he could hack two people apart without thinking, what else had he done?
Katie's head spun. She wanted to throw up again, but it didn't come this time. She wiped the bile off her lips with a shaking hand and pushed herself up on the bed.
The sound of something being dragged drifted in the room through the open window.
She stood up and forced herself to the window to look.
One set of legs was dragged out of view around the back of the house. Katie squeezed her face between the iron bars, trying to see. Earl came back around the corner, holding his axe again.
Hide! her mind screamed.
She pulled herself away from the iron bars and hurtled through the bedroom door to the hallway. She knew Earl would be coming for her to do the same thing that he did to those two poor souls.
The house was dark. She didn't know where to go.
Up! her mind said.
So in the darkness she stumbled, though her legs were weak. She prayed that it was too dark for the camera at the end of the hall to see her. Katie slipped into another bedroom on the left and stowed herself away into the deep dark.
She found the closet and buried herself behind a rack full of clothing into the corner like a subterranean bug.
The seconds ticked away and already she couldn't breathe. But she listened over her tiny gasps for air to any sound that would tell her he had arrived with his instrument of death and that her time had come.
Enough time went by that it started to feel like her body was being pulled into a black hole and she was being torn apart from the inside out by its crushing pressure.
A door opened somewhere and then closed. Katie listened as footsteps followed, then some muffled thumps. She couldn't tell where in the house he was, but it didn't sound like the front door.
Now Earl was ascending, coming closer to her. For a moment it sounded like he was right on top of her, like the axe would plunge through the wall at any moment and cut the back of her head open. Katie's heart hammered and she curled into the tightest ball she could. She would have wet herself if she had any urine to spare.
Then he passed her to some other place in the house. His stride was calm and measured—peaceful, even. As if nothing had happened at all, they faded away completely and there was silence.
Katie listened to the smothering sound of it for so long that she thought she would go insane. And then sometime after that, she fell asleep.
When she awoke she was covered in sweat. She slid open the closet door and crawled into the bedroom. There was no breeze, but her skin immediately felt cooler, like she was plunging into a cold pool. She gasped for air and slowly got back to her feet. As she did she noticed there was light coming through the window. It was daytime.
Stepping into the hallway, her brain quickly recalled the events of the night before and pieced together everything that led her into that closet. She glanced around in a paranoid manner then made her way back to the bedroom she'd slept in since first coming to the house.
Static squawked over a speaker right behind her.
Katie jumped and spun around.
"Breakfast is on the table for you downstairs, Elizabeth," Earl's voice echoed. "Do eat it before it gets cold."
After some consternation, Katie made her way to the stairs and descended. Just like he'd said, breakfast waited for her on the dining room table. A plate of eggs and sausage. A small plate with two pieces of toast and a glob of strawberry jam sitting on top next to it. Utensils sat next to that.
Just the thought of eating made
her stomach turn and she went back to the stairs on shaky legs. She had expected him to come out of the shadows, from around the corner maybe, and finish her off just like he had to the two drunks. But on the surface everything seemed like it was back to normal—at least as normal as normal could be called in a place like this.
She pulled herself up the staircase to the second floor. It took all the strength in her left arm holding the banister to help herself along the way. Her legs were about to give out. Her mind had gone off the subject of food, but she felt like vomiting anyway.
"You killed them," she muttered aloud without necessarily intending the words for him to hear. "You did it. You just went and did it."
Katie's vision started to blur, but she made it onto the landing of the second floor and then there was a lapse in her memory and the next thing she knew she was lying on her bed in the same room where she had watched the two grisly murders. The vomit from the night before had been cleaned and the sheets changed.
Some more time passed as she lay on the bed, as still as a dead doe. Her legs and arms were extended straight out like a doe struck by a car and lying to the side of the road. Her eyes were glossy and staring into the void. Her breathing was slow and shallow. Thoughts came through her mind as they pleased; she had no control over them.
Now it was later in the day and she hadn't moved an inch. She wasn't aware if she slept at all; far as she could tell, her eyes had stayed open the whole time. But it felt later and she was a little more rested.
The smell got to her, though. A stink came from her armpits that was sharp to her nose. Her hair felt greasy on the pillow. Her legs felt prickly when she moved them. She didn't care about the legs, but she thought she could use a shower.
Katie pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked around the room and it all seemed like a daydream. She didn't know what time it was and she didn't bother to look at the bedside clock radio, but sunlight was coming in through her window, telling her it was sometime in the afternoon or evening. She saw the camera watching her from the closet. She didn't look, but she was aware of the others in the room seeing her from different angles.
Just a shower. That couldn't hurt. She couldn't think of anything long-term, just one step at a time, and right now that would do her some good. For her peace of mind which was right on the edge of breaking.
She gathered up a change of clothes from the closet and then she entered the hallway. The first thing her eyes went to was the camera at the far end perched up just behind the bathroom door. That red light next to the lens that told her it was on pierced straight through to the core of her being like a knight's lance rending her. She kept her eyes down on the carpet runner until she was in the bathroom, then she tightly shut the door behind her.
Katie stripped off her clothes and folded them neatly on the bathmat below the sink, then she laid out her new clothes on the toilet seat cover. She was still self-conscious even though she knew the camera out in the hallway couldn't see her now, and she clutched her arms over her chest as she turned the water on and waited for it to get hot.
When it was, she stepped inside and washed herself. She bent down and retrieved some soap sitting on a rack on the corner of the tub that Earl had provided. The very idea that she was using the toiletries he left for her was appalling, but she tried not to think about it.
The suds ran down her back, and she turned to wash them off, facing away from the water now. Her eyes caught on something as they drifted across the tiled wall in front of her.
The corner of one tile was chipped, showing the shadows lurking behind. In the shadows she saw something that looked curved. She leaned closer and peered at the object. It was round and a little reflective, like a lens.
Despite the hot water washing over her, her body went cold.
"You son of a bitch," she muttered, tears stinging her eyes.
She didn't even turn the water off; she just tore the curtain open and stepped onto the bathmat, soaking it with a deluge of water that rolled off her body. She reached for the towel hanging on the rack and wrapped it around herself, backing away from the shower. She caught sight of her profile in the mirror and threw a glance at herself. She looked like a miserable, drowned dog. She didn't look attractive like she used to when she came out of the shower. There were dark rings under her eyes, ones she never remembered seeing before. Her eyes looked dead. Even her skin seemed twenty years older now.
Katie cried as she struggled to dry herself off with the towel still wrapped around her. She reached for her clothes.
Her roaming eyes caught something else: a camera fitted into the baseboard behind the black wastebasket, peering up through the wire mesh at her.
Then another one, where one of the screws on the towel rack was missing—a tiny one, but it was an unmistakable lens.
And now she noticed that the mirror wasn't as reflective as it should be; it almost looked translucent. She pulled it open to reveal the medicine cabinet behind... and the small camera sitting in the corner of the top shelf, peeking out from behind vials of medicine. It was a one-way mirror.
He was watching her even in here; he was watching her everywhere, no matter what she was doing. He could see from every angle—in the shower, on the toilet, everywhere.
Katie's tears were cut off like someone had twisted the tap on a faucet. Anger burned inside her like an unstoppable forest fire.
She clutched her clothes to her body. "That's it!" she shrieked. "I'm not playing along with your sick game anymore! No more breakfasts, no more dinners, no more stupid dresses! You may as well just kill me!"
Coming and Going
Rage coursed through her. The blood flowed through her head so much that her temples pumped like a flat tire going over the road.
"I did it for you," he said over a speaker in the hallway.
This took Katie aback. "What?"
"The men outside," he said. "I couldn't let them take you." Earl's voice was quiet and almost shy—a whole new shade from the domineering person that had taken Katie prisoner and threatened her life. "I did it for you." He mumbled this.
Her mind in a flurry, Katie juggled the towel and slipped her clothes back on. Fully dressed, she still held the towel up to her as she listened to him speak. She opened the door to the bathroom and slipped into the hallway. Her eyes were fixed on the camera perched up in the corner and she slowly started to back away from it.
"Say something," Earl said, almost pleading, like he was searching for approval.
"You're sick," Katie replied. "You're so sick."
"I'm not," he said quietly.
Katie continued to back down the hallway toward her bedroom. "Yes you are." Her eyes broke from the camera and drifted left and right to the pictures of Elizabeth on the walls. "You don't even have a wife. You never did. She's just some random girl whose pictures you stole. Did you work in a photo lab or something? Or maybe an old crush you stalked? You're... you're just mentally ill."
Katie stopped. She was afraid that she'd gone too far.
There was a long pause and then Earl said, "You'll know her soon."
"What do you mean?" she found the courage to ask.
"You'll have her spirit soon enough... once you're ready."
And then he was silent.
Katie stood rooted in the hallway. Her brow creased up. What did he mean by that? Her gaze fell on the variety of pictures of Elizabeth hanging crookedly on the walls. The poor girl, whoever she was, smiling at her like she was still so full of life.
You'll have her spirit soon enough. The words floated in her head like leaves on a lake. Just what the hell was he trying to do with her? It was obvious he wanted her to become this poor woman, but why? He really was deranged.
There were noises in the house that she was too distracted to notice, and then she heard the closing of a car door outside followed by an engine rumbling to life.
Katie snapped out of her trance and hurried down to the ground floor. She looked o
ut the kitchen window and saw Earl's Volvo twist around and then roll out of sight along the driveway.
Her brain went back to the noises she heard in the house. Somehow he was getting in and out, but not through the front door. Somewhere from within the house he was watching her. But not in one of the main rooms. He was hidden, somewhere where she couldn't see. He could see her but she couldn't see him. Sick bastard.
The thought danced through her head like a graceful ballerina, dazzling her with its entrancing display; if she could figure out how he was coming and going, that might be her key to escape.
Katie set off immediately, not having any idea how long he would be gone. She double-checked the front door, but there was no way it was budging and she knew he wasn't using it; it was all for show—just something to distract her and take her mind off the real exit. But she would find it. Her hands clenched into fists as a new determination arose in her.
She moved around the kitchen, then the dining and living rooms, checking the windows, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. She stopped when she got to the hallway leading past the basement to the front door. She knew he wasn't going down to the basement; every time she heard him come in the house, he was ascending. Always ascending.
Katie looked up to the second floor like she had just spotted a plane in the sky after being marooned on a desert island. She hurried up the stairs and gazed at the rooms surrounding her. A curious thought that she had considered before came back to her. There was something peculiar about the house that extended past the fact that it was all made out of ironwood or that there were bars covering all the windows: the rooms just didn't seem big enough for the size of the house. Some of them seemed stunted, like there were small areas of the house unaccounted for.
Then it struck her. He was in the walls. Secret crawlspaces or tunnels or something like that—it must be!
She gazed around carefully, trying not to make it look so obvious. She knew he was watching her from every angle at every moment, and she didn't want to arouse suspicion in case he looked over the videotape footage when he returned. She couldn't see anything obvious in the hallway; the hardwood floor stretched from the front of the house to the back, a worn, dusty carpet runner on top of it. The walls were solid planks of wood just like the floor but wider. The ceiling the same thing. There were no doors or hatches or anything of the sort.
The Box Set of Hauntings and Horrors Page 67
