The Hidden Back Room

by Jason A. Wyckoff

  Reed grunted exasperatedly. He thought perhaps they had moved beyond ‘Mitzy’. He wasn’t inclined even to look at her. But he did, and the sight made him yelp and topple his chair behind him. He reeled back on standing; the chandelier seemed so oppressively low now that he felt compelled to duck and raise an arm in defence.

  Two loose curls of Mitzy’s hair climbed upwards, tethered to thickening white wisps extending from the chandelier.

  ‘Her hair!’ Reed shouted.

  Dieter looked at his ‘wife’ and recoiled. His left arm now visible, Mitzy slumped forward; her bald head smacked her bread plate. Her wig bobbled in a pendulum swing as it rose towards the chandelier. Dieter clawed after it. His pudgy fingers became stuck in the web and he alternated between trying to keep from losing the wig to trying to keep his hands from becoming entangled, a sticky-fingered child attempting to manage the dregs of his cotton candy.

  Reed began to circle the table to assist Dieter—why, he didn’t know, save that it seemed his assistance was required—but he broke off and stumbled backwards with a terrified cry as Mitzy’s arms began swinging wildly at the shoulder, smacking the table-top and reaching back blindly, as though she were manically trying to swim. Her torso rocked as a result, though it held no vigour of its own. Her head bounced limply, her glassy, skewed stare saw nothing, and her mouth remained static, even as she screamed, ‘Get them off! Get them off!’

  Finally both arms came forward together and pushed her upright. She wobbled, both blank and terrified, and then tumbled from her chair.

  ‘Mitzy!’ Dieter abandoned the wig and bent to catch the body as it fell.

  Soft pops like kisses sounded one after another from the clouded chandelier, and a wash of gossamer fell languidly over the table and Dieter and screaming Mitzy. It dripped in incredibly fine silver thread to the floor. And ten thousand tiny spiders radiated like growing lace.

  Reed staggered down the short passage and slammed into a door. He was sure the door should have been pushed approaching from this direction, but he had apparently remembered wrong. Yet there was no handle to pull. He clawed at the edge of the door. His irritated pinky blazed with pain as it at last found purchase. Reed tried to be calm and to act gingerly, lest he lose what grip he had. He sank short nails into the clammy wood and pulled. There was no light between the rear door and the intersection of three, the door to which he could see only in outline (with the question of the purpose of the door he’d just passed through nagging a second—for it seemed to complicate the process needlessly—until he shoved the qualm into a dark corner to ignore until later). Reed breathed deeply and exhaled to steady his nerves. He tried to remember the reverse of the sequence and he ran it through mentally before navigating it, thought to action, push to swing to swerve to release.

  The dining room was silent and dim. No tables stood at back among the dust. The upholstery on the booths was torn and stained and littered with crumbs of plaster. No staggered legion of bottles hid the dirty, cracked mirror; a lone Styrofoam cup kept company with a rat-king of cellophane tape on the bar.

  The front door creaked open and ‘Honest’ Jim entered, calling, ‘Hello?’

  Reed was too stunned to respond, but Jim peered into the room and saw him.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. He surveyed the restaurant. ‘You couldn’t have gotten good service here.’

  ‘No,’ was all Reed could muster.

  ‘I came to tell you your car is ready. It’s been fifty minutes.’

  Reed tried to recall how long it had been since he’d crossed the street. He didn’t think it could possibly have been as long as that. He began to move his hands as though the motion might arrange the blocks of experience into understanding. He pointed jerkily towards the back. ‘They . . . need help . . . ?’ he muttered.

  Jim nodded towards the back. ‘Is there somebody else back there?’

  Reed put his hands over his mouth, wondering what the answer was.

  Jim said, ‘I had better go see.’ He strode past Reed towards the middle door.

  Reed tried to warn Jim about the complicated sequence, but his voice caught in his throat. To his surprise, Jim pushed one door open—which stuck open—and then opened a second straightaway, through which he proceeded without hindrance to the back. Reed, bewilderment ever on the increase, followed.

  It was nearly impossible to see in the back room, but a dilapidated condition to match the front could be inferred by a strong odour of mildew. Reed heard Jim patting the wall to his left; one of the lights meant to give lustre to the chandelier hiccupped to life.

  ‘The electricity is on,’ Jim said.

  The room was empty of but a single shape. The round table was gone, but the naked frame of the chandelier rose like a jagged wart from the floor in its place. The two men walked towards it. Reed yelped when his foot splashed a puddle. Jim noted the various pools and streams on the floor and pointed up towards the top of the cupola.

  ‘There are several broken windows. I count seven. That’s a lot of space for rain to get in. Well, would you look at that?’

  Jim stepped behind the chandelier and held out his hands, palms up. The spotlight illuminated his torso and the area over his head. Diamonds flitted down through its beam.

  ‘The rain has turned over to snow,’ Jim announced with a smile. ‘That’s frozen H-2-O, that’s what that is.’ He watched the snow fall on his hands. ‘They say that no two flakes are alike, but I wonder how anyone could ever really know that.’

  Reed exploded with babble. He launched into an account of all that had happened, sputtering with pent anxiety. He knew he sounded like a madman, and he didn’t know why he thought Jim would be a receptive audience, but he had to have it out of him, and he had to have it out right away. Jim listened attentively without comment or question. Reed told all, and the spilling of the story calmed him, such that in its telling he drew a conclusion, albeit one he was hesitant to speak aloud.

  ‘Who do you think they were—Dieter and . . . and the waiter?’ he asked.

  Jim peered at him, appearing to concentrate intently, but echoed only, ‘Dieter and the waiter.’

  Reed started to answer his own question, ‘They—they must have been . . .’

  Jim seemed about to speak, but then, as though of its own volition, one hand raised to his mouth and a single finger stoppered his lips, as though to prevent the thought from being uttered.

  Reed laughed in relief. As disconcerting as his experience had been, when reduced to the only available interpretation, it really was simple, and, made simple, made manageable—and most importantly, concluded, for the deduction seemed intrinsically to imply termination.

  ‘Thank you,’ Reed breathed.

  ‘Glad to help!’ Jim said. He extended an arm, dangling Reed’s car keys from a white tag bearing his name. ‘Come on, Carla will ring you up and we’ll get you on your way.’

  Reed snatched the keys gratefully. ‘Yes, of course.’ He looked at the quiet, magic snow drifting through the light. ‘I’ll be right behind you,’ he said.

  Jim nodded and went down the passage.

  Reed walked to where Jim had stood and gazed up at the shattered cupola and watched as clean white motes winked to life from the shadows directly above him. Cool kisses brushed his cheek. Relaxed, he turned to go.

  He stepped on something squishy. It clung to his foot. He kicked fervently to dislodge it. A stench like corruption assailed him. Finally the thing sloshed free and flopped wetly to the floor in the far reach of the spotlight. Reed screeched, turned, and slipped in the water, falling to his side. He scrambled clumsily to his feet and bolted to the doors. The first door opened and he was once again in the anteroom leading to the three-door intersection. Terror seized him—hadn’t there been only the two doors when Jim led him through? He pulled at the next door, which opened, but was so snug on his chest that he couldn’t get around it. Nor could he see beyond. He sucked in and tried harder to squeeze around the door, but only inc
reased the pressure on his chest. He tried to reverse course and couldn’t. Panicking, he whined. He was stuck. He flattened himself as much as possible and pushed the door back towards its hinges. He was at last successful in retreating. Though he wanted to go through the other way, he was at least comforted to be free. Then he remembered the thing to do was to open the door behind him and the next door simultaneously to get through to the intersection on the other side. So he opened the door to the back room once more.

  Dieter sat at his table, a luxurious spread on the table before him, plates of food nibbled and forgotten. His face was purple; his eyes bulged; his tongue bulged, conjoined overripe plums bursting through his wide maw. Behind him, the waiter’s face loomed red with exertion. His hands were clamped behind Dieter’s neck; the white cord of his apron top cut into the fatty flesh. Dieter reached back, his arms waving wildly as he slapped ineffectually at the waiter’s shoulders. Then his arms shuddered forward and fell still. The waiter released his grasp so that Dieter’s body leaned halfway to the table. As the cord of his apron was still wrapped around Dieter’s neck, the waiter was pulled in a slump over the dead man.

  He raised his head and looked at Reed.

  Reed was through the two doors in the space of a skipped heartbeat, into the intersection of the three. Confused and terrified in the dark, he could not sort the sequence. He turned several times so that he was no longer sure which way he faced. He tried to open one door and found himself wedged inside a triangle of wood. Pushing on one door seemed only to stiffen the jam between the other two. He banged and wailed and scratched at the seams; he threw his body in every direction, in strikes seeming ever shorter, in a space ever more cramped, more airless. Then he heard the door to the antechamber bang open. Fevered pounding erupted beside his head and he screamed. He kicked in one direction and shouldered at the door opposite. Something moved and a space gave way.

  Suddenly he fell free into the dining room. The door in the middle of the wall swung, creaking, once, twice, then only fluttered, and finally trembled to a halt. Only Reed’s laboured breathing disturbed the silence. Then he thought he heard the tick-tick-tick of a creaky hinge on a door slowly opening. He jumped up, turned, and ran.

  He dashed across the street without looking. A car stopped short and honked. Reed was in the yellow box of the waiting room before the driver pulled away.

  As soon as his racing heart allowed him, Reed paid his bill and retrieved his car. Jim waved affably.

  His socks were soaked by the time he got home. He left a trail of footprints on the pepper-speckled grey rug in the hall outside his apartment. He warmed his feet on a register. His shoes he had thrown in a dumpster next to the garage. He wanted never again to consider the thing that clung to his foot in the abandoned back room. He liked to believe his shoe had been polluted with the stench of a dead rat. He did not care to think it came from the foetid curls of a sodden wig.

  TANOROAR

  The horse was still breathing with quick, shallow rasps, but I didn’t think it had long left. There was a deep gash on its side along the abdomen that cut up under the ribcage. Blood was caked on its belly and blackened the soil beside it. I guessed the injury had been inflicted sometime overnight. Of course, there was nothing Geri or I could do to help. We weren’t veterinarians and we weren’t armed to provide mercy. I was nervous that someone might come along and accuse us of hitting the horse with our car. Even a cursory inspection would clear that up, as any front-end impact with an animal larger than a goat would have totalled our little sports coupe and strewn our unsecured luggage over the pastoral two-lane road. Still, between the Connecticut plates and the fact that I could play any role in a Marx Brothers biopic but Zeppo, I was nervous how we might be regarded. For this same reason I felt disinclined to approach the nearby farmhouse to inform the (presumed) owner of the horse’s distress. He would discover it soon enough and it would do the horse no good either way.

  But Geri wasn’t hearing it. We had seen the animal, and we had stopped, and by stopping, we had taken on responsibility. As little as we could do to help, she felt we had to do that one thing.

  ‘Perhaps they’ll have a gun,’ she said, meaning they could provide the service we were not equipped for.

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ I said.

  ‘Leonard,’ she chastened me. She pointed to the nearby enclave of residence and utility buildings. ‘I guess he must be theirs.’

  ‘Maybe they already know.’ I pointed at the blood on the ground.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A footprint.’

  She bent and squinted.

  ‘That’s a heel,’ I insisted, pointing as I, too, bent near (but not too near) the horse.

  She remained dubious. ‘We can leave the car here. Come on.’

  As Geri walked away, I glanced once more at the poor creature’s dimming eye and I admit that I was as much afraid of an emotional scene by the roadside as I was of a hostile attitude. There could be no happy ending to this act of ‘courtesy’ even if we had nothing to fear—and I still saw that as a big ‘if’.

  Forty yards of crude, wooden post-and-rail fence ended at a wide, gravel-studded dirt drive that spread to access the various buildings. A large farmhouse faced a vast lawn presided over by a single, huge oak. Hemmed by the rough terrain, sprouting, rough-rutted fields lay farther on; across the road similar fields spread more evenly. Past the house stood four white boxes of varying size, all with metal roofs; I guessed they were garage, barn, storage and stables. Beyond those a wrinkled ridge rose quickly; more stately crests loomed in the distance. It was mid-morning. I didn’t see anyone around.

  Porch slats creaked under our feet. The screen was shut, but the entry door beyond stood open. Under Geri’s knuckles the loose door clattered in its frame, wood on wood; a single flake of faded lavender paint fluttered down. ‘Hello?’ she called.

  I waited five seconds after she repeated the process before I said, ‘Well—that’s that.’

  She grimaced at me. ‘The door’s open.’

  A shape sprang into view, silhouetted against the sun from the back windows. A girl in her late teens bounced up to the entry and threw open the door with such exuberance that we barely had time to jump out of the way. Strawberry-blonde curls spilled over her bare shoulders; droopy ringlets framed freckled cheeks plumped by a wide smile. She wore a tight t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and a knee-length blue jean skirt ruffled at the hem. She nearly shouted her genial greeting, ‘Hi!’ She strained to keep her cordial gaze on me, though she was clearly more intrigued by Geri. I found her exuberance disconcerting.

  I felt obligated to be the one to offer explanation, but my first thought was of the dreaded emotional impact of bad news on this curious young woman, so I motioned with a thumb over my shoulder and began uncertainly, ‘We, uh, stopped by the side of the road.’

  Geri rescued me, ‘Is your father home?’

  This gave the girl the excuse to look full on at my wife of thirteen months, and she drank her in for several seconds. After seeming to affirm what impressed me as a foregone approval, she returned her attention to me and, still smiling, said, ‘Let me get him for you. Won’t you come on in for a minute?’

  Geri thanked her and stepped inside before I began to stammer an excuse to stay on the porch.

  Inside the living room was a glass coffee table in front of a tweed sofa, an unmatched recliner covered by a blanket, an entertainment centre with disorganised stacks of movie and game cases, and other terribly normal middle-American consumer clutter. Facing west, the room was dim. The girl skipped down a hall and through a door at the back of the house, calling back, ‘Wait there. Lemme get Pa for you.’

  Maybe ten seconds after she disappeared from view, we heard her shout, ‘Pa!’ It seemed she was calling out the back door. ‘Pa!’ she repeated.

  I was getting antsy. I rolled from ball to heel and back with my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting and trying lamely to seem casual.r />
  Geri wasn’t fooled. ‘We can’t leave now,’ she said.

  After another interminable wait, we heard a brief, muted conversation from the back of the house, followed by heavy tramping. A man of about fifty with a flat face and grey muttonchops stepped into the room, trailed by his daughter.

  He looked us both up and down. With a good eye for meat, I’m sure he didn’t like what he saw. He grunted, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ I said, ‘We—ah, could we speak alone?’

  He glared at me like I was an idiot or a salesman. ‘What is it?’

  I coughed. ‘Um, we were driving down the road,’ I gestured again, as though he might not know where the road lay that bordered his property, ‘and—well, there’s a horse out there—on the side of the road. It’s injured.’

  His face darkened and he frowned. As I had expected, the girl gasped in horror. ‘Not Freddie! No, it couldn’t be!’ She rushed up and grabbed her father’s arm. ‘Pa! Say it isn’t Freddie!’

  He shrugged, jostling his daughter. ‘How would I know? Get your brother. No, I’ll get him. Wait. Let me think. Injured, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’ My throat went dry so that I had to whisper, ‘Badly, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Huh.’ He nodded. ‘Alright. Wait here a minute.’

  ‘It’s right out front,’ I said, gesturing yet again. ‘We could just go . . .’

  He froze me with a glance. Geri squeezed my arm. Apparently finding no comfort on her father’s shoulder, the girl suddenly crossed to Geri and nuzzled hers. I felt Geri jump, but she took her hand from my arm and patted ‘Rina!’ (as her father addressed her).

  ‘You go and get Troy, now,’ he commanded, ‘Tell him to meet us down by the road . . . and tell him to bring his rifle.’

  I clenched, of course.

  ‘Yeah,’ the man said, seeming to notice my distress, ‘I reckon you can get on, now. I’ll walk down with you, if you don’t mind.’

  I didn’t mind at all—if he didn’t mind sprinting after us. But decorum prevented such manoeuvres, and we followed him out the door and down the path to the road at what I thought a surprisingly measured saunter, given the news he’d just received.