by Ray Garton
“Ah, you remember your Sunday school lessons.”
“They were beaten into me by a religious fanatic. He was somebody you’d probably really like.”
“Not familiar with his work, I’m sorry, although I’ve done some work in that field myself. Child abuse. It’s such fruitful work. I derive a great deal of pleasure from the effects as they become evident years later. There’s no end to the neuroses that can, and do, come of it. It’s a field in which I try to exercise as much creativity as possible. But I digress. What have you come to ask me, Ryan?”
“Those people,” I said, my voice hoarse, “what do they want with you?”
“If I told you that, Ryan, I would have to kill you.” It chuckled, that hard, dry sound, and a shudder went through me. After that, my bladder felt full. “Seriously, Ryan, I can’t tell you that. It’s priveleged information. Top secret. That’s why you’re not even supposed to be talking to me right now. I’m a big secret, Ryan. We can’t have wild young wards of the state running around knowing about a big secret like li’l ol’ me, now, can we?”
“What do you tell them?”
“Oh, Ryan. You force me to say this – it’s none of your damned business. But if you’d exercise your imagination, you might think of a few possibilities on your own, Ryan. Think about it. I know things. You know that. Your father, by the way, died two weeks after your fifth birthday. He was stabbed to death in a fight.”
“How ... how do I know that’s true?”
Maddy smiled. “You know it’s true, Ryan. You know in your heart it’s true, just as you knew it was the truth when Mr. Granger’s friend translated what I said in French. It simply rang true, didn’t it? Just as this rings true. He was stabbed to death in a fight when you were five. He never even knew about you.”
“Who are you that you can know that?”
“Like I said ... I know things.”
“That’s not an answer. Who are you? What are you? Are you a demon?”
“Now you’re getting personal, Ryan, and I find it very rude.”
“Are you a demon? Or are you something else?”
“If I told you who and what I am and revealed my part in the great scheme of things, Ryan, your poor little head would explode. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
I shook my head. “That’s still no answer.”
In a perfect impersonation of Jack Nicholson, the voice said, “You can’t handle the truth,” but without speaking loudly. Then Maddy laughed a high Maddy laugh, with her real voice, moist and adenoidal, and said, “You’re silly,” before laughing some more. Then she became serious and her mouth curled up into an O for a moment before she said, “Help me, Ryan. Please help me.” For that moment, her eyes became less focused and she swayed a little where she sat, on the edge of the bed. But focus returned and she smiled a very unpleasant smile. Then the voice said, “Next question.”
I was pretty knocked over by what Maddy had said. The real Maddy, not that twisted voice. The little girl Maddy who’d said, “Help me, Ryan. Please help me.” She’d sounded so sad and helpless and somehow urgent at the same time, it made me a little sick to my stomach.
“What’s your job here?” I asked.
“My, but you’re tenacious tonight. Why don’t you ask me something I can answer. Like ‘When is the world going to end?’ or ‘When will I die?’ Something like that, okay?”
“What does the government want from you?” I asked.
Maddy rolled her eyes. “What do you think they want, you silly boy? Knowledge, they want knowledge. Knowledge I can give them.”
“What do you get out of it?” I asked.
“I should make you wash out your mouth with your own urine. That would teach you to pry. I could, you know. Your bladder’s pretty full about now, isn’t it, Ryan? You gonna wet your pants?”
“What do you get out of it?” I asked again.
“There’s a war going on. I provide them with information. They provide me with the only thing I’m interested in. Sacrifice.”
“What kind of sacrifice?”
“What do you think?”
“Hu ... human sacrifice?”
A big smile fattened Maddy’s cheeks and made her eyes small. “Every bomb dropped is a sacrifice to me. And the thing with me is, I don’t care who’s droppin’ ‘em or who they’re bein’ dropped on.” It laughed that cold, hard laugh. “As long as the bombs keep droppin’, the missiles keep flyin’, I’m happy.”
I didn’t say anything for awhile. I thought of the bombs being dropped in the Middle East, of all the people being killed on all sides. She kept smiling that big smile at me.
“And now that I’ve told you,” it said, “I’ll have to kill you.”
“How old are you?” I said quickly, wanting to change the subject.
“Older than you could possibly imagine living.”
“Are you ... evil?”
“That’s a matter of opinion, Ryan, and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. Yes, I helped the man beat his baby to death. But I also spared that child a nightmarish childhood at the hands of her abusive father, and I rid the world of a child abuser. Everything has its positive side, Ryan.”
That’s evil, I thought, but I didn’t say it, I know I didn’t say it.
“Too bad, Ryan. I expected something more original from you than that simplistic, narrow-minded label.”
I worked up some spit again. “Sorry to disappoint.”
She said something in French then.
“What? Oh. You’re speaking in French again. Am I supposed to be impressed?”
My testicles ascended when I felt a gentle pressure on my throat. I backed away, but didn’t escape it. I gagged.
It stopped.
“Do I have to get nasty? You might show a little respect. You may not know what I am, but you know enough about me by now to know you should probably show me a little fucking respect.”
I coughed and stammered. “I-I-I’m sorry. I mean, I mean, I-I’m – “
”Oh, shut up, please. You sound so pathetic. It’s people like you, Ryan, who make me wonder why I even bother. You know what I mean? I give and I give, and what kind of appreciation do I get? ‘Are you a demon?’ Really, can’t you do better than that? Why don’t you go now, Ryan. You’re beginning to bore me. You wouldn’t like me when I’m bored, trust me.”
I gulped. This wasn’t going well at all.
“You know, your mother doesn’t have long to go, Ryan,” the thing said. “Here, I’ll show you.”
I’m still trying to get over what happened next.
Maddy’s bedroom melted away like ice cream under a hot blowdryer. I found myself standing in a small, dark, dingy room furnished with a bed, and a round table and chair over by the window, with a small television on the table, an ugly swag lamp hanging above it. The room smelled of cigarettes and body odor. The walls were yellow from cigarette smoke, the curtains a drab tan color. The brown carpet was ratty and had holes in it here and there. Some dull yellow light came from a small lamp on the nightstand beside the bed, but it wasn’t much.
The bed’s covers were tangled up at the foot of the bed and Phyllis was stretched out on it in her bra and panties, on her back. She looked like a corpse, all bones under a paper-thin layer of pale bruised skin. She lay still with her mouth wide open and her eyes closed.
On the nightstand beside the bed next to the small lamp, I saw a spoon, a Zippo cigarette lighter, and a hypodermic.
I stood there for what seemed a long time, and I wondered if she was already dead. But I could see that she was breathing, although barely. Then her body convulsed once, twice. She vomited, and some of it spurted up from her mouth, dribbled over the corners and ran down her cheeks. But most of it stayed in her mouth. She made a gurgling sound then, and convulsed some more. Then she stopped breathing.
I was back in Maddy’s bedroom and she grinned at me.
“Unfortunate, isn’t it?” the thing said. “The doctors call it
aspiraiton. And it’s going to happen soon. But then, you don’t care, do you?”
I realized tears were running down my face. My throat was hot and a sob worked its way up from deep in my chest.
“Why did you shuh-show me that?” I said.
“Why not? Now, what shall I show you next? I know – how about your own death, Ryan? I’ll show you how you are going to die, how about that?”
I couldn’t get out of that room fast enough. I stumbled and fell going up the basement stairs. I came upstairs to the bathroom and then here, to my bedroom.
I can’t stop shaking.
All of a sudden, I find myself wanting to see Phyllis. Wanting to see my mom. Just one more time before she chokes to death on her own vomit in that awful little motel room. I’ve never felt anything for her before – well, never anything good, anyway. But now, I feel so sad for her, it hurts. It hurts in the pit of my stomach.
I know there’s no way I’ll get to sleep. It’s one-thirty in the morning, but I’m going to sneak out of the house and go see Mr. Granger. I don’t want to be alone right now, I need to talk to someone.
And I don’t want to be in the same house with that thing.
SEVEN
Elliott had just gone to bed when his doorbell rang. He got up in T-shirt and boxer shorts, put on his robe, and pushed his walker down the hall to the living room, to the front door. He let Ryan in.
The boy looked terrified. His eyes were wide and he was pale, mouth open. He had difficulty stringing words together into a sentence at first. Elliott put a kettle of water on the stove to make tea and tried to calm Ryan down.
Ryan paced the living room. When he finally started talking clearly, he told Elliott what had just happened in the basement bedroom, told him about seeing his mother die.
“That thing was going to show me how I’m gonna die then,” he said. “So I got the hell out of there.” He took the tape recorder from his shirt pocket and handed it to Elliott. “Here. It said something in French again.”
Elliott listened to the tape.
Hearing that deep whisky-voice again gave him a chill. When he got to the line in French, he stopped the tape and rewound it a bit, then picked up the phone on the endtable beside his recliner and called Francis Feighan.
“Who’s this?”
“Hi, Francis. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I’m up. Sounds like we have a better connection this time.”
“Listen to this.”
He put the recorder up to the receiver and played it: “Comment vous m’aiment casser l’autre hanche, abruti?” He turned off the recorder.
Francis laughed. “Are you ever going to explain all this?”
“Later, Francis. What’s the translation?”
“‘How would you like me to break the other hip, idiot?’ That’s the translation.”
Elliott dropped the recorder into his lap. His mouth was suddenly dry and his heart was beating faster.
“Thank you, Francis,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”
“Hey, what’s going on, anyway?”
“Later. I’ll tell you later. ‘Bye.” He punched the Off button and returned the phone to its base.
“What did it mean?” Ryan said as he finally sat on the couch.
Elliott told him.
They sat in silence for awhile, with their own thoughts.
Elliott was scared.
“Have you told her ... it ... about me?” Elliot said.
“No. I haven’t even mentioned you.”
But it knows about my hip, Elliott thought. And it knew about the bad connection on the line when I was talking to Francis yesterday, before it even happened.
He leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs and put his face in his hands. He jumped when the kettle whistled. He pushed his walker into the kitchen and put tea bags into two mugs, poured the water. He had Ryan carry the mugs out to the living room. They said nothing, just sat there while their tea steeped.
Elliott played the tape again. His heart broke when he heard Maddy say, “Help me, Ryan. Please help me.” She sounded so sad and hopeless.
“What if it’s serious?” Ryan whispered in a harsh rasp.
“About what?”
“It said now that it told me, it would have to kill me.”
“It could’ve killed you right then and there if it wanted to. I’m sure if it wanted you dead, you would be by now.” But Elliott had little confidence in his words. He knew he was incapable of predicting what this thing would or wouldn’t do. He’d never written any fiction about possession, so he’d never researched it. All he knew was what he’d gotten from the fiction he’d read and the movies he’d seen, and he knew how unreliable that could be.
“We’ll talk to Marie tomorrow,” Elliott said. “Maybe we can convince her to involve her minister.”
“You think she needs to be exorcised?” Ryan said.
“What do you think, Ryan?”
After a long moment, Ryan nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.” He thought a moment, then said, “What about her?”
“Maddy.”
“Yeah. You heard her. She asked me to help her. She’s trapped in there somewhere with that thing.”
Elliott took in a deep breath and sighed. “You go ahead and drink your tea, Ryan, calm yourself down. When you’re feeling better, go back home to bed. In the morning, we’ll talk to Marie. If there’s some way we can help Maddy, we will.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep over there anymore,” Ryan said.
“Like I said, if it was going to kill you, it probably would have by now.”
But Elliott did not know that to be true. He wasn’t even in the same house with the thing, and he felt unsafe.
He had the unnerving feeling that somehow it was watching every move he made.
EIGHT
Elliott woke the next morning to the sound of his doorbell ringing. It was only a few minutes after eight. He got up and put on his robe, pushed his walker out to the living room, and let Ryan in.
“I sneaked out right after breakfast,” Ryan said. “Before they could assign me any chores. Are we going to call Marie now?”
“Whoa,” Elliott said, his eyes half-open. “I’ve gotta have coffee first. Then we’ll call Marie.”
Elliott made some coffee and they sat at the kitchen table drinking it in silence. He wondered if Ryan was thinking about the thing, too.
Of course he is, Elliott thought. It’s all he can think about, just like it’s all I can think about.
Ryan had stayed until after three that morning. They’d watched old sitcoms on Nick at Nite while they drank their tea. They hadn’t said much, although a great deal of unspoken things hovered in the air between them – things about the girl in the basement next door.
After drinking a couple cups of coffee, Elliott rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, and said, “Okay. I’ll give her a call.”
He called Marie and asked her to please come over and help him with something. She was at the door five minutes later with a plate of persimmon cookies for him. Her smile faltered slightly when she saw Ryan.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Ryan,” she said. “I didn’t even know you’d left the house yet.”
Elliott said, “Ryan and I would like to have a word with you, Marie.”
“About what?” she said.
“Why don’t you come have a seat,” he said, leading her to the kitchen table. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
She frowned slightly, but her smile never went away entirely. “Is something wrong, Mr. Granger?”
“Please call me Elliott, Marie. Sit down. Please.”
He poured her a cup of coffee, then poured more coffee into his own cup and Ryan’s. He sat down first, and Marie followed. She put the cookies on the table. Ryan got the microcassette recorder on the endtable beside the recliner and brought it over to the table. He sat down across from Elliott.
“Marie, I’d like to talk to you abou
t Maddy,” Elliott said.
Marie’s smile disappeared, her back stiffened, and a hand went to her mouth. “Oh, I can’t talk about Maddy,” she said abruptly.
Elliott said, “Why can’t you talk about her, Marie?”
“Well, because there are privacy issues ... I’m not allowed to just ... I can’t go around ... “
”Who were those people who came to the house yesterday?” Elliott asked. “I know they were there to see Maddy. Who were they?”
Marie looked at Ryan a moment, then turned to Elliott. Her smile was gone, her face firm. “What’s going on here, Mr. Granger?”
“All I want you to do, Marie, is listen to Ryan and me for a few minutes, all right?” Elliott said.
“About what? What’s going on here?” She was frustrated and a little angry.
Elliott said, “Ryan has been talking to Maddy lately, Marie, and he’s recorded his conversations with her. I don’t think you know what you’ve got in that basement of yours, and I think you should know. Do you know what’s wrong with Maddy, Marie?”
“She has multiple-personality disorder,” Marie said. “She’s a very disturbed little girl. But she’s generally well-behaved.” As she said this, the corners of Marie’s mouth pulled back and her eyes crinkled up and she looked like she was about to cry.
“Do you really believe that?” Elliott said.
“It’s what they told me.”
“Those people in the suits?”
She nodded.
“Listen to this recording. It covers two separate conversations Ryan had with Maddy.”
Elliott nodded at Ryan and he started the tape.
As Marie listened, tears welled up in her eyes. Elliott gestured for Ryan to get her a paper towel from the roll over the counter, and he did. She dabbed at her eyes as she cried silently. Before the tape was finished, she said, “All right, all right, I’ve heard enough. What did you think you were accomplishing by doing this, Ryan?”
