The Doorway

by Alan Spencer

  “Maybe the detective found something,” Cheyenne said. “It makes sense, right? He found out who killed Deborah, and the house is letting us go.”

  Cheyenne decided to call out to the next-door neighbors. Certainly people were on edge since the disappearance of her mother. There was a kidnapper/possible murderer on the loose.

  “Help! Call the police! We need an ambulance! Somebody help us!”

  Cheyenne did this for several moments before she realized not a single house stirred. No lights turned on. Windows and porch lights remained dark. Dogs didn’t bark in their yards.

  Nobody had heard her.

  “Wait, something’s not right.”

  Cheyenne surveyed the yard. She didn’t see anything. She thought of a plan of escape. The tall wooden fence she could climb. She could easily hop over it, run to her car and drive downtown to the station.

  Before she made it off the porch and onto the grass to reach the fence gate, Bruce held her back. “Hold on. You see them? Look real close at the gaps in the fence.”

  Cheyenne had trouble making the details out through the dark shadows. When she eyed the thin openings between the fence, the fence being rickety and old and see-through in certain parts, she screamed. Eyes were watching them. Purple corpse fingers were poking through to tease them. Cheyenne caught bolts of torn blue uniforms. Shiny badges. Torn skin. The gleam of guts. Each of the cops rattled the fence, banging their fists against the wood.

  Cheyenne saw the very end of the yard. She could outrun them. Jump the fence, gun it the hell down the street and scream her head off. She was fast, and in her running shoes and the right motivation, which she had plenty of, she could outrun anything.

  She bolted towards where the cops weren’t banging the fence.

  “Cheyenne, no!”

  Bruce was hobbling after her.

  “Cheyenne, you don’t know what’s out there!”

  Officer Wright was after her in a streak.

  Cheyenne sensed the cop and Bruce behind her. They wouldn’t stop her. She had to take matters into her own hands. Save herself, then save everybody else. Somebody had to take a chance and do something. Going back into the house wasn’t an option. She’d go mad spending another second in that scary place.

  Her neck swelled with pain from when the flesh turned into a noose and hung her.

  She was so close to dying.

  Strangled by fucking flesh.

  Cheyenne was nearing the end of the wood fence that was about six feet high. Somehow, she’d have to scale it. She didn’t get a chance to decide how to maneuver the jump. A man stood behind a tree. He lingered over the large sandbox. The man was jamming a shovel into the sand and making a hole.

  Cheyenne gasped at the corpse of a man lying on the grass beside the sandbox. She only knew it was a man by his general shape. The guy had been skinned alive. His exterior was a cherry gleam of muscle tissue. The corpse’s eyes were wide and contorted in agony.

  The cops were banging on the fence where Cheyenne was going to jump.

  Cheyenne froze. Her plan was ruined.

  Officer Wright caught up with her. He saw the corpse and the man who was still digging a hole in the sand box.

  “Hold it.” Officer Wright drew his gun. “Who are you? Stop what you’re doing right now!”

  When the man stopped shoveling and stuck the shovel into the dirt, Officer Wright gasped. “Oh no, it’s him.”

  Bruce stood in front of Cheyenne. “Him, who? Who are you, asshole?”

  “It’s the guy who killed all those officers. It’s Ted Lindsey. I saw him do it. He’s insane. Stay away from him.” Officer Wright drew his .28 pistol and aimed it at the killer. The gun was shaking in his grip. “What do you want with us, huh? Sick fucker, answer me.”

  Cheyenne sized up the killer in that moment. The clear plastic protective eyewear. The overgrown black beard that covered the bottom half of his face. The dark blue painter’s jumpsuit. The black gloves. The man was hulking, standing at well over six foot. The man could snap her in half.

  When Ted Lindsey spoke in that sharp gravelly rasp, the cops on the other side of the fence banged harder against the fence. Ted’s eyes penetrated each of them. His gaze assigned accusations to each of them.

  “Who killed my wife? Was it you? You? How about you? Who wants to confess?”

  Officer Wright wasn’t sure what to say to those demands. “Let’s go downtown. We can talk about this. I assure you the police can help with this investigation—”

  “You had your chance for ten years! I’m tired of waiting. I can’t cross over to the afterlife without knowing who murdered my wife. Those I murdered can’t cross over without knowing either. I guess I’m blocking the gates of Heaven and Hell for as long as it takes. For some of us, it’ll be Heaven, but for me, it’s straight to Hell! I’ll be burning in that infernal pit with the rest of the sons-of-bitches. I accept my punishment, but first, someone will pay for killing Debbie.”

  Bruce tried to reason with Ted.

  “What do you know about your wife’s death? Help us help you. You’re hurting innocent people. Like your Debbie.”

  “You know nothing about my Debbie! It’s you people who owe me an explanation. Don’t you realize how special of a person died that night? I did my part. I worked day and night to find her killer. I came so close. One of you knows who murdered her. If you’re not going to help me, if you’re going to play mind games, then I’ll take matters into my own hands yet again. If you won’t tell me who killed her, then I think it’s almost that time again. I already had a nice chat with that Hannah bitch. She didn’t know a goddamn thing. She had some juicy details to dish out, though. But it doesn’t point me to the killer. One of you knows something. I’ll make you tell me. I have my methods. So who’s next for questioning?”

  Officer Wright fired the gun.

  Cheyenne screamed.

  The bullet hit Ted in the chest. Blood bloomed from his chest. Ted didn’t flinch. He looked down and laughed at the point of entry. Ted’s grin was malevolent.

  “I think you just volunteered, Officer.”

  The fence burst into wild tatters. Arms battered and powered through the barrier. Cops and other corpses they hadn’t seen before, various victims of Ted’s, stampeded towards them. Cheyenne was horrified at the various means of the corpses’ damage. Some were crawling on the ground without legs. Others were reaching out with one hand while the other held in their insides. Some were suffering deep stages of decay while others were lightly marbled by decomposition.

  “Back into the house!”

  Bruce was directing the retreat.

  Officer Wright was firing his weapon until the gun went dry. It didn’t do a thing to slow the collection of corpses down. Wright gave up using his gun. All three of them were doubling back to the house. Cheyenne didn’t make it far. The body lying next to the sand box reached out to grab her ankle. Its grip was tight, and Cheyenne tripped. Bruce stomped the foot at the wrist. Brittle bones shattered. Cheyenne jerked her leg to reclaim it, ripping the hand from the corpse’s wrist. Running with a hand squeezing her ankle harder and harder with each stride, Cheyenne wouldn’t stop retreating for anything.

  The corpses were making their way after them fast.

  The stink of dead flesh. The singed smell of scorched flesh. Cheyenne smelled fire. The smell of the burning doorway.

  Surging ahead faster, Cheyenne somehow kicked off the hand from her ankle. It rolled into the grass, falling into the window well up against the house. Bruce kicked aside the charcoal grill wedging open the door. He ushered in Cheyenne first. Bruce was right behind her. He kept the door open for Officer Wright, who was a good four seconds behind them.

  “Move it! They’re closing in!”

  Officer Wright’s expression was all horror.

  Bruce had the door ready to
slam closed the second the cop crossed the threshold when the doorway itself started to smolder. A blast of searing hot air ejected Cheyenne and Bruce off of their feet. Bruce slammed into the coffee table inside, breaking it in half. Cheyenne landed on the couch, doing a forced back flip.

  Cheyenne tried to get up again when the door exploded again with that intense red light. Flames burned around the doorway. Before she had to close her eyes and cover them with her hands, she caught Officer Wright standing in the threshold. Ted Lindsey had him from behind, one hand around his midsection, the other around his neck. Cheyenne was halfway to the door, racing to grab hold of Officer Wright’s extended hand.

  “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelpmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  Cheyenne yelled, “Reach for me!”

  Too late.

  The red burning stopped.

  The door had shut itself.

  Officer Wright was gone.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Morty thought he was buried. The compaction of dirt was so crushing. He had no leverage to move or shift. Morty could only let whatever happened happen. Suffocating, stifling his own cries and forced to be stock still, he could suddenly breathe again. The pressure on his limbs lifted. The weight of the dirt was gone. He didn’t fall or land. He simply was one place, then he was another. He dared to open his eyes. The way was dark. He couldn’t see his hands in front of his face. Morty lifted his upper half up off the ground, and he smacked his forehead against what he thought was a low ceiling.

  He heard the creaking of wood.

  Someone exhaled nearby.

  “Who’s there?”

  The voice was whisper soft. “Only me. Your wife.”

  “Glenda? Glenda!”

  Morty reached out his hands to feel around in the dark. The ceiling and floor was so low, he had little room to maneuver. It didn’t matter. Glenda was alive. She was here in this house. He had to have her in his arms to prove she was really there.

  “Tell me where you are. I’ll help you. Honey, oh honey, did that son of a bitch hurt you? I’ll get you out of here. I promise, Glenda. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Stay away from me.”

  The way she said it made Morty freeze.

  It wasn’t a command.

  It was a warning.

  “You don’t want to see me.”

  Up from the floor, between tufts of attic insulation, poured in red light. Glenda stayed in the very far corner of the attic across from Morty. She kept to the deepest shadows. He couldn’t see any of her in detail, only her basic outline. Glenda was an object occupying a space, nothing more.

  Morty was on hands and knees. He edged towards her. He only wanted to help. No matter what happened, he loved her, he would support her and he would get her out of this house and away from Ted Lindsey.

  “What did he do to you? Tell me, Glenda. I’m here now. I won’t leave you alone.”

  She pounded her fist against a wooden beam twice, shrieking, “Stay away!”

  Morty was startled by the harsh words. He never heard her make such savage sounds before. She was in shock. The bastard must’ve hurt her real bad. Then he remembered Hannah. How her hand was nailed into the table. Her fingernails were ripped out. Hannah had been tortured.

  Panicked by the very thought of his wife enduring such things, Morty had to ask her, “Did he interrogate you?”

  “Downstairs, yes. That evil, evil man asked me questions. You don’t want to know the things he did to me. Ted’s sadistic and insane. The questions were almost as horrible as the torture.”

  “Glenda, please, let me see you. Let me help you, please.”

  “Nobody’s going anywhere until you solve that woman’s death. You heard Ted Lindsey’s question. Do you know who killed his wife?”

  “I don’t know anything about Deborah’s death. That lunatic seems to think one of us does, but we don’t. We can’t satisfy the lunatic. Nobody can. He murdered innocent people, he’s so crazy. He’s trying to murder us. For all I know, Ted killed his own goddamn wife.”

  “One of us killed her. Ted won’t let us go until the truth is revealed.”

  Morty was tired of talking to a shadow.

  “This psycho’s got you saying things you don’t mean. You never harmed anybody. You couldn’t even kill the bugs in our house. You’re not thinking straight. I understand you’ve been through a traumatic experience. This has been hard on all of us. Just come on out so I can help you. You have to come out.”

  Glenda sounded playful. “I’ve been a really bad girl.”

  “Glenda, stop. You’re not in your right mind.”

  “When somebody starts torturing you, you can’t hold back anything. I told him everything. Deep down personal things. Things I’d never tell you, Morty. It’d break your heart.”

  Morty didn’t like the awful feelings welling up inside of him.

  “Glenda, my God, what are you saying? Did you kill Deborah?”

  “If it were that easy, Morty!”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Oh Morty, you’re in for a very long night. You and your friends really have to start asking each other the right questions. Ted’s busy in the basement as we speak. He’s picking out his tools and preparing to shed more blood in the name of justice.”

  “Who did he take? We have to get down there and save them. It’s not Cheyenne, is it?”

  Glenda’s voice was monstrous.

  “If our daughter knew the things I’ve done she’d never speak to me again. Maybe I deserve this punishment. It doesn’t matter if one of us killed Deborah. We’re here because it was meant to be.”

  “Glenda, no. Don’t say those things.”

  “You wanna hear what Ted did to me? How he ripped the secrets from my body?”

  Morty extended his hand to her. “Stop talking about these horrible things and take my hand. Let’s get you out of here. Let’s get everybody out of here safely. That’s what matters.”

  Glenda wasn’t listening.

  Morty was startled at hearing something tink against the ground.

  Tink-tink-tink-tink-tink-tink.

  Whatever it was making the noise was landing in front of Morty. He looked real hard and finally made sense of the objects hitting the ground. A long tail of pink meat was attached to each tooth. She was throwing teeth at him.

  “After nailing my hand to the table, he ripped out all of my teeth.”

  Morty backed up a half-step.

  “Why are you doing this? Let’s just leave, please. You don’t have to tell me this right now. Later, when we’re far, far away from here. Don’t say another word about what happened.”

  Glenda ignored him.

  “Then Ted, he had this trick. It’s called a Chelsea Grin. I never heard of it before. You see, Ted took a box cutter and he drew a slit on each side of my lips. By that time, I was telling him everything I’d done bad in my life. I even made up things, hoping I would happen upon something that would satisfy him. I didn’t say the right things. I didn’t satisfy his questions. Not even close. So Ted makes a big show of cutting the heads off a bunch of nails so both ends are sharp. Then he starts replacing my old teeth with the nails. Now, I’ve got a mouth full of metal.

  “Oh, before I forget, the special thing about the Chelsea Grin: every time he jammed a new nail into my gums, I screamed! Those little cuts at my lips tore right through my cheeks all the way to my ears. R-rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrip!”

  The red lights filtering through the tufts of insulation burned brighter and banished the shadows to expose Glenda. She was crouched on all fours about to leap at Morty. Her clothing was in rags, stuck to her body with sweat and blood.

  Morty reeled seeing her hideous face. Her head resembled a puppet with a large mouth. The cheeks were torn, exposing rows of jagged nail teeth. Gory slobber actively leaked from her
maw.

  “It’s better I kill you before Ted gets a hold of you. I’ll make your death quick. I’ll tear out your throat. You’ll bleed out and be dead in minutes.”

  This wasn’t his wife. Glenda’s pale dead skin. That hideous maw. The way her body was arched. She was compelled by a strength, an evil.

  Morty knew his wife was dead.

  When Glenda’s legs flexed to fling herself in his direction, Morty stumbled between a wooden beam and a row of insulation. His leg broke through the thin layer of wood and plaster. The rest of his weight sent him right through the floor and into the room below. The last thing Morty saw was wicked metal teeth flash before his very eyes.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  A lightning blast of agony exploded in his hand and shot up his arm. Shouting, crying, cringing, mewling, cursing, sobbing, begging for mercy, blind in the dark, skin going ice cold, nerves cranked on high, Officer Wright didn’t know what was happening to him. The room was pitch black. He still felt the pair of strong arms grab him from behind and pull him backwards. Then that fiery heat and the electric red color had enveloped him. And now he was here, sitting in a chair in front of a table.

  He couldn’t move his right hand.

  BANG!

  Something else was driven into his hand. Now he really couldn’t move it. Wright called out to his attacker to stop, for God’s sake stop!

  A light bulb was turned on overhead.

  It cased the room in that deplorable red.

  There stood Ted clutching a hammer in one hand and a six-inch nail in the other. Before Wright could react to the light, Ted’s face bent in rage, those eyes bulging with ideas and notions, all of them adding up to drive another nail through this man’s hand.

  BANG!

  The nail was driven between the bones of Wright’s hand with such force the nail slid through as if his flesh was made of wax. So effortless. Blood mushroomed from the three different entry points. Details rushed in at Officer Wright as his nerves worked overtime to deliver the messages of pain. The red light bulb offered vague dimensions to the room. The concrete walls. The staircase in his peripheral vision. The water heater and furnace, each standing as archaic beasts of rust. Ted Lindsey’s hands visibly trembled while clutching the hammer. The surface of the table was gouged and riddled with holes from previous victims. Dried blood stained it.