by Alan Spencer
Officer Wright could only imagine the horrors coming his way.
Hanging from the wall from hooks were torture tools. Prods. Prongs. Spikes. Scythes. Pitchforks. Tongue rippers. A leather whip. The darkness obscured the rest of the items.
Ted dropped the hammer on the table. It bounced twice. Each bounce made Officer Wright jump with a start.
Officer Wright begged to be set free. He said he’d do anything to solve the murder of Ted’s wife. He was a fresh set of eyes. A new perspective on the case. He would work day and night and forever until Deborah’s murderer was caught.
“I must know everything you know, Officer,” was Ted’s response.
Ted’s back was to Officer Wright.
The psycho was studying the tools and sizing each of them up.
Officer Wright’s throat was ragged from begging the man to reconsider what he was doing. He was seconds from ripping his hand off the table and making a run for the stairs when Ted finally turned around. He had a wooden bucket in his hands.
What the hell was he going to do with the bucket?
“Let’s begin. Now what do you know about my wife, Officer?”
Chapter Forty-Three
Detective Larson stumbled backwards when Deborah Lindsey stood over him. Blood ran down her neck, trailing from the massive wound to the back of her head. The detective could hear pieces of her skull shift and crack. The blue face of the corpse was offset by the sympathetic eyes and her words of genuine despair.
“Detective, I know you did everything in your power to find my killer. You’re someone who respects doing the right thing. This isn’t about me. It’s about Ted and everybody he killed. My husband isn’t the man he used to be when I fell in love with him. He’s psychotic. I wish I could’ve told him to live his life without me. It wouldn’t matter, unfortunately. Something in him snapped when I died. I don’t know how to stop him. I’m afraid of him. But there’s one thing I do know.
“Ted made this entire situation happen. Whatever information he has to go on, whatever he carried with him when he died, he knows that between all of you here, someone knows who killed me. He murdered those cops because he knew they didn’t know anything about my death. They were useless. Ted grows impatient, you see. Soon, he won’t care what you may or may not know. He’ll go on killing everybody who steps into this house forever. More innocent people will die. The sooner you figure out who killed me, the sooner he’ll stop the killing.
“Use your skills, Detective. Ask the right questions. Get everybody together and interrogate your witnesses before Ted does. I can’t stand the thought of more people dying on my account. Let my soul rest in peace. Let Ted’s soul rest in peace. Let everybody’s soul finally rest.
“It’s already too late for one of you. My husband’s interrogating them as we speak. Hurry, before he takes another one of you down into the basement. Detective, it’s up to you to finally put it all together.”
The detective struggled to form words. “What about the doorway that brought us here? And the red lights? What does it mean? How do we escape?”
Deborah took a moment to enjoy her bedroom. The pictures on the walls. Her vanity mirror. The memories of being alive once upon a time.
“This house is charged up with so much pain and agony. Ted killed so many people in the basement. The burning doorway was a tear in the fabric between the living and the dead world. An opening. These spirits, these people who died under this roof, never left this house. The red has preserved the memory of those who died here, and their dying moment. Their agony is as fresh as the moment it was inflicted.”
“The red?”
“Red is the color of the place where we come from. It’s the walls between Heaven and Hell. The outer boundaries. The red is a purgatory full of spirits who can’t cross over into their appointed eternities, whether they be Heaven or Hell. I too have waited in the red. I only want to know who killed me and why. When I finally understand who killed me, the others who died in the house and I can finally go to our appointed eternities. Ted too.
“This house is charged with so much agony and death, the red has seeped in It has changed the house. Some who have been killed here have held onto themselves, their sanity, while others have turned completely evil. Some of the victims will try and help you, while others may try and hurt you. Don’t let me turn evil. If I turn evil, I may not go to Heaven. I might just wind up in Hell like my husband.”
Deborah was standing in front of him one moment, the next, she was back on the floor lying there dead. Larson wanted to shake her and beg her to give him more clues, anything at all to go on. Talk of the red confused him. The afterlife, the border between Heaven and Hell, he considered it all nonsense. But she had given him an important clue. Someone among them had the right information to track the killer. All he had to do was employ his skills. No forensic science. No investigative team. Even Officer Wright would be little help, or did he know something?
Larson rubbed at his eyes.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
The pressure was all on him.
He had to get everybody together again and ask them the right questions. Hard questions. Personal questions. He was grabbing at uncertainty here, but he wasn’t going to watch everybody die in this house because he hesitated too long to act.
Detective Larson rushed out of the room. He saw the door across the hallway was open. Janet was in the bathroom. She was hunched over the bathtub digging out handfuls of dirt and throwing them onto the floor.
“Where did you go?” Janet kept saying. “Where did you go? Where did you go? Morty, please!”
“Janet, what’s happening here?”
Janet had tears running down her face.
“Morty, the hands, he was forced down into the dirt.” She was scraping the bottom of the bathtub. There was nothing but flat surface. “He was forced down. Where did he go? Where the hell did he go?”
“Beneath the dirt. He fell into the red.”
The detective whipped around at the figure standing at the door. Larson stood in front of Janet as a barrier. Janet hurried to her feet, grabbing her 9mm with dirt-covered hands. Larson had his pistol out, but then he lowered it.
“My God, it’s you.”
“Who is this…corpse?”
“I’m here to help you,” the corpse spoke. “You remember me, don’t you, Detective? I’m Jared Simpson.”
“Yes, I remember you.”
The corpse was a man in his late forties. He had a graying comb over. Between the thinning threads, the man’s bleeding scalp showed through. The man’s shirt was soaked in blood.
“Ted kidnapped me. I was driving home from work one night. The mad bastard tails me in my car. He hits me from behind at a stoplight. I get out, and he chloroforms me. I’m dragged into Ted’s car, and I wake up in a room surrounded by bricks. The guy goes on and on about how I killed his wife.
“I don’t know a damn thing about how Ted’s wife died. He keeps questioning me anyway. First, he nails my hand into a table so I can’t escape. He drives seven nails in, then one more for good measure, or so Ted said. He laughed at my agony. Then he scalped me by using a scalpel and his bare hands. Then he…he…”
The corpse’s scalp started sizzling.
Janet gagged on the smell.
The detective cringed and did his best to keep his gorge down.
“He poured salt on the wounds. Ted heated up the questioning. I never knew a woman named Deborah Lindsey. I’m a married man with three kids. I tell him that, and it means nothing to him. Absolutely nothing.”
The corpse’s face contorted in horror.
“This guy, he starts making me swallow these small ice cubes. Over the course of many hours, I’ve swallowed about twenty of these things. The questions keep coming. Why did you kill my wife? What kind of a person are you? Where were y
ou the night of October 15th between midnight and one-thirty? The questioning goes nowhere, because I didn’t kill his wife. I know nothing. I swear to God. He scalped me for fuck’s sake! You would think I would’ve given him a goddamn confession by then. But Ted keeps on asking me questions. He punches me in the stomach so hard, I throw up. And I find out what was in those ice cubes. Fish hooks. They catch on my stomach and esophagus on the way up. He left me in that horrible brick room to internally bleed to death. The sick fuck.”
Janet was horrified by the mental pictures the man’s story painted.
Larson was disgusted, but then something struck him as strange. “Hold on, Jared, you said October 15th between midnight and one-thirty?”
“Yes, that’s when Deborah was murdered.”
Larson snapped his finger once. “Of course, it makes sense. October 15th between midnight and one-thirty. Doesn’t that ring a bell? That’s when Glenda Saggs went missing. Ted wanted to mimic his wife’s scenario. Glenda went missing the same day and the same time. Ted brought us all here together on purpose. Ted set it up this way. Ted didn’t know who killed his wife, but he might’ve been onto something. He knew the right people to bring to this house to solve the case. Yes, yes, yes.”
Jared was visibly disturbed at the mention of Ted’s name.
“Stay away from that murderer. He’ll do horrible things to you, and if you can’t answer his questions the way he wants you to, the things you’ll suffer…”
“Why did he pick us?” Janet asked. She did everything to keep her eyes from how the man’s scalp kept bubbling red. “I mean, I know I didn’t kill Deborah. You didn’t kill Deborah, Detective. Cheyenne and Glenda Saggs didn’t kill her. That leaves Bruce, Morty and Officer Wright.”
“Officer Wright didn’t live in the area when Deborah was killed. It’s highly unlikely he murdered her. Plus, he’s so young. He would’ve been a young adult. Maybe not even a teenager yet. Wright is innocent. So I’m not sure if any of us killed Deborah. The thing is, one of us may have the clue that connects it all together. It’s coming up with that shred of evidence that’s going to be problematic.”
Jared wasn’t so sure. “Or Ted’s so insane, he’ll find any excuse to drag people into the red.”
“Into the red?” Janet asked.
Larson tried to think of a way to describe it. “It’s complicated, and I’m not sure if I believe it myself.”
Jared explained the red. “This house is locked in our dying moment. The red has used our pain and agony and unrest and preserved our dying moment. This house is bursting with fucked-up energy. Until we know who murdered Deborah, we can’t rest in peace. Ted will continue his interrogations now that he’s been able to pull you guys into this house, and into the past. That’s why he waited so long. He wanted all of you here at once, and taking Glenda was the only way to draw you in. You see why it’s so important you guys work together.”
Janet screamed at what appeared from the bathtub. Lying there was the corpse that attacked her when she first arrived here. The woman’s broken corpse that was bursting with dirt earlier reached up from the tub and grabbed Jared. The gnarled, broken hand seized Jared by the throat and forced him downwards. The corpse tore the skin down his stomach like a sheet. The skin came away soft, the decayed flesh tearing with little force. Bursting from Jared’s midsection were hundreds of jig hooks.
A geyser of red blasted from Jared’s lips. He unleashed a single plea before his body dropped to the floor in gory pieces.
“Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!”
There stood the dirt corpse woman. She was in tatters, her limbs rubbery and disjointed. Soil kept leaking out of her wounds. The woman had half a head, what resembled a split section of an anatomical figure. The corpse reached out to throttle the detective’s neck, but Larson shot her in the face. The woman’s single eye bulged wide before it exploded from the bullet’s entry point. Bloody mud shot out the back of her head.
Larson shoved the body aside.
The corpse dropped into the tub.
“Go! Run!”
Larson forced Janet into the hallway. The detective slammed the bathroom door closed behind him. The woman beat against the door. Janet and the detective aimed their guns at the barrier. Any moment the corpse could break down the door and attack.
From the ceiling, they heard stomping. Something heavy went THUD. A circle of plaster cracked, then split open wide. The ceiling was caving in.
The corpse woman’s fist punched through the door, breaking the barrier in half.
“Run to the second bedroom! Hurry!”
Janet took the lead, dodging the plaster raining from the ceiling. The bathroom door was ripped from its hinges. The corpse woman’s body acted as a spear. She chucked herself through the tatters of the door.
“Jesus!”
Larson fired two wild shots in the corpse woman’s direction.
The ceiling bent like a long convex mirror. Weight was bearing down on the diminishing barrier. The ceiling was going to collapse any moment.
“Hurry! This way!”
Larson shoved Janet into the second bedroom. He quickly threw the door shut and started to use the furniture in the room as a barricade. After securing the entrance, they stopped and listened for any more destruction coming their way.
“I think we’re okay for a minute,” Janet said breathlessly. “What do you think?”
“Yeah. I think we’re okay.”
Seconds later, the voice in the shadows agreed with them.
Chapter Forty-Four
Everything was collapsing underneath Morty. Glenda was on top of him, clacking those hideous teeth made of nails. Their combined weight sent them through the attic floor down into the room below. Morty was howling in terror, cursing at what used to be his wife as she bit down on his shoulder. He could feel the metal scrape against his collarbone. Morty grabbed her by the neck to keep those horrible teeth away from his flesh. By doing so, he spun her around. When they hit the hallway floor on the second level of the house, Glenda was on the bottom. Breaking the fall had stunned the woman. Morty didn’t waste a moment getting up and running down the upstairs hallway.
Names exploded from his lips: “Cheyenne! Bruce! Detective! Heeeeeeeeelp!”
The moment he ran past the bathroom door, he almost tripped over the piles of wood scattered on the ground. Thrown up against the wall, Morty was once again wrestling with something very dead and pissed off. The corpse was barely there. Dirt kept crumbling free from the broken valleys in her face. Morty was able to throw the corpse woman off, almost spiking the body onto the ground in the process.
“It’s easier this way!” Glenda shouted from behind him, crouched again to tackle him. “Ted will torture you. He’ll put you through a thousand agonies. Let me kill you. I’ll do it fast and easy. Almost no pain at all. I promise you. I won’t prolong your demise.”
Morty’s shoulder was oozing blood. The upturned skin against the open air was so painful he gritted his teeth to force the pain down.
“Stay away from me. You’re not touching me or Cheyenne! You’re not Glenda anymore. You’re a monster.”
Glenda launched herself at him. Morty attempted to retreat, but he tripped in his haste and hit the floor. He was dizzier than he thought with the blood loss. Glenda was on top of him, battering him with her limbs. Morty couldn’t fight back. The dirt woman’s corpse was tugging on one of his arms, and Glenda was tugging on the other.
“RIP YOU IN TWO!” Glenda’s nasty nail teeth scraped each other, shedding wild sparks through the lining of her see-through cheeks. “Hold him good! Pull with all of your might! I WANT HIM IN PIECES!!!”
Morty begged for them to stop.
Glenda only laughed.
“PULL!”
Morty thrashed to escape their violence.
He couldn’t do anything to stop them.
>
“HARDER!”
Glenda pulled so hard, the rag doll dirt corpse lost her arm. It sounded like a root being pulled up from the earth. It caused Morty to crash into his demented wife. Everything was flashes of motion. Glenda threw him up against the wall. She reared back her head. She bared her nail teeth. She was about to chomp down on his face. Then out of nowhere, a wooden object swung. One blow, and Glenda’s eyes were rolling into the back of her head. With another blow, the object broke the crown of her skull. Glenda hit the floor, unmoving.
Morty’s defender shoved Glenda aside and helped him down the stairs. The dirt corpse lay on the floor disembodied and unable to pick itself back up. Rushing down the stairs, Bruce helped Morty into the living room. Cheyenne waited there.
Cheyenne screamed, “Watch out behind you!”
Glenda’s corpse was looking down at them from the second floor railing. Her head was leaking blood and brains. Cheyenne was horrified to see her mother’s face in such a ruined state. The corpse stood there, teetering in place, until she tipped forward over the stoop, did a front flip and crashed down into the living room.
Glenda didn’t get up.
Bruce clutched a bloodied wooden rolling pin. Something he’d taken from the kitchen. Shock played out on Bruce’s face. Cheyenne kept her head turned away from her mother.
Morty’s shoulder bite brought him back to the moment and the situation. As did the red doorway at the living room closet that simply materialized. That awful, foul smell exuded from the rough outline of the door. Then out came a hobbling shape.
Officer Wright.
The man was clearly dead. His eyes were bluish white cataracts. The man’s flesh was whiter than bar soap. His cop uniform was soaked through not with blood but water. It was leaking out from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Every orifice was actively leaking. The trickling sound was grating to hear.
