by Alan Spencer
Gargling and choking against the ever-flowing tide of water, the officer tried his best to speak.
“You don’t have much time before Ted interrogates the next person. Pretty soon no one will be left alive. The red lights are filling up the house. Soon everything will be red. When that happens, when all is red, we’ll all be dead and trapped forever in this forsaken house with Ted. You must find out who killed his wife!”
Officer Wright pointed a gray finger at the kitchen light bulb that changed from yellow to red. Then through the crack of the basement door, more red light showed. Bleeding through the drawn curtains, that haunting color burned.
“You see, the house is filling up with red. Soon, the corpses trying to help you will turn against you once they realize you can do nothing to save them from their fate. No Heaven, no Hell, only purgatory red. If Deborah’s case isn’t solved, Ted will keep bringing in more victims through the doorway. He won’t stop until he learns who killed her. Can you imagine how many will die that had absolutely nothing to do with the murder?
“This is our best shot. You people have the most clues. You’re so close to the truth. Don’t let the red become your afterlife. We’ll never see Heaven or Hell. We will suffer on Deborah’s dying day for all eternity.”
Officer Wright noticed Glenda’s corpse.
“When Ted was interrogating me, he strapped me down and waterboarded me. I thought I had drowned a hundred times. Ted was saying things about Glenda. They were quite disturbing. Glenda confessed to certain things when Ted was pulling out her teeth in the basement. There’s so much you don’t know about your wife, Morty. But Bruce knows plenty. Make him tell you what he knows before Ted gets to him!”
Officer Wright suddenly couldn’t talk anymore. Fluids blasted from his mouth. His skull quaked with building pressure, causing the top of his head to erupt. Water kept spewing from the top of his head. Like a broken fire hydrant, the officer’s innards were sucked up through his head and spat out until the deflated corpse hit the ground. When it did, the corpse went still.
Red light blasted from the second floor level.
Every light coming from that level was crimson.
Morty held his daughter close. Bruce stood opposite them clutching the rolling pin. His eyes weren’t glued on the cop. They were drawn to Cheyenne and Morty.
Morty’s voice was accusatory. “You got something to tell me, old friend? What was Officer Wright getting at? He said you know things about Glenda. What does she have to do with what’s happening? Glenda couldn’t possibly have caused this, so what do you know?”
Bruce’s face went heavy with dread. He could cry or he could go into a rage. The man teetered between the two emotions until his face went neutral.
“I thought I was doing you a favor by keeping the secret. The cop was right. There’s a lot you don’t know about your wife, Morty. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. I didn’t believe it myself when I first heard it. I blew it off as gossip. As bullshit, because it’s just that, bullshit. Keep in mind, I didn’t get this information firsthand. I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend. That kind of gossip. I blew it off, man. You loved that woman, and I wasn’t going to ruin that for you. I was only being your friend.”
Morty studied the red lights coming from various nooks and corners of the house. There were a few normal burning bulbs in this house. There wasn’t much time, if he was going to apply the dead cop’s logic to the lights. If they didn’t solve Deborah’s murder, they would be trapped here in the red forever.
“You better tell me what you know about Glenda. Spare my feelings. I want to know everything.”
Bruce issued a long sigh. “Have it your way. You won’t like it.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The voice in the room was another corpse. It was a woman in her fifties. A cigarette dangled from her mouth, half spent. She wore a pink bathrobe and green curlers in her hair. Her flesh hung loose about her face as she talked. Her back was turned to Larson and Janet. She was cradling something in her hands. The detective kept his gun drawn on the corpse. He knew anything could happen at any moment.
Janet’s eyes cased the room. Her inspections stopped on a big box. Inside were the parts for a baby crib. The wallpaper was circus themed, with lions, tigers, elephants and clowns. The way the wallpaper puckered and was water stained, it made the animals and clowns look malicious. There were storage boxes in the room too. Many of them were unopened.
Janet couldn’t figure out what the woman was doing here in the room.
The detective’s voice trembled. “W-who are you? Answer me, or I’ll shoot you.”
The woman’s voice was nasal and no nonsense. Janet imagined the way old women talked while getting their hair done at the salon. Gossipy.
“No need to point your gun at me, Detective. We’ve met before. You questioned me at the station the night of Deborah’s death. You were so nice to me. And so handsome. My husband and I were divorced then. I would’ve asked you on a date under better circumstances.”
Larson gave Janet a “what the fuck” expression.
Janet mouthed, “Just let her talk.”
“This room you two are standing in used to be a storage room. Deborah and Tim were planning on turning it into their first child’s room. Deborah was only five months into her pregnancy when she was murdered. I live about three blocks from the young lovers. I welcomed them into the neighborhood with a basket full of goodies. Call me a busybody. Barbie the busybody. That’s what they call me. I get my nose into everything. I suppose that might’ve been the reason Ted went after me after Deborah was killed.
“I was the one who called the police that night. I was taking my dog on a walk the night Deborah was murdered. My German Shepherd’s getting old and can’t make it beyond a few hours without having to go outside. I used it as an excuse to go on a walk and smoke. My husband hated it. He said it was like kissing an ashtray. He never complained about it when we were fucking. Funny how that works.
“So anyway, that night, I heard a car screech away from this house. I didn’t get the plate number because there were no plates. It was a big rust bucket piece of junk. One of those cars that should’ve been put to rest a long time ago. A real clunker. Funny thing is, there was this bumper sticker. It was a person’s hand flipping the bird. I told the police everything I saw. I suppose it didn’t help. It was suspicious the way the car just sped away from Ted and Deborah’s house. I mean, the driver screeched their tires really late. You tell me that ain’t suspicious? I hadn’t seen the car before, so you know, Barbie the busybody had to say something to the goddamn cops and get herself into trouble. So much for the ol’ friendly neighborhood watch. People aren’t kind to each other anymore. Everybody wants to be left alone these days. One day, people might get their wish.
“So anyway, I baked Ted a casserole after Deborah’s funeral. I felt for Ted. Everybody could tell he wasn’t himself. He was a shell. Ted was much too young to be a widower. I visited him a lot to give him kind words and support. I even did his laundry when he invited me into his house. I cleaned the guy’s home, because he simply quit doing anything, and what do I get in return? He bashed me over the head with a hammer and dragged me into his basement. Before I come to, he’s got me in this bricked off room sitting in a chair and driving nails through my fucking hand. With every question I can’t answer, he drives another nail. Why was I outside walking my dog that night? Why didn’t I see the car’s plates? Why didn’t I go in and stop Deborah from bleeding to death?
“I told him I didn’t know anything had happened to Deborah. I didn’t think much of the car, just that the car was strange. I didn’t know that poor Deborah was bleeding to death in the house right after the car drove away. He accuses me of killing Deborah. Me. He isn’t hearing me anymore. Ted’s eyes are different then. The store’s open, but nobody’s inside to ring you up, if you get what I�
�m saying. From that point on, it didn’t matter what I told ol’ Teddy. He was going to hurt me.
“In the corner of that brick room, he had a metal spike standing up from the floor. The tip was rounded off and smooth. He made me stand on that spike in my bare feet. He strung me up by my thumbs. I kept shifting my weight from one foot to the other to keep my balance on the spike, but after so long, I slip off the spike. It isn’t long before I break both of my thumbs.
“Teddy enjoyed the sound of my bones breaking. He hung me up by all my fingers until every single bone was broken. Then he grew tired of hurting me. He told me I was useless. Ted strangled me with his bare hands. He buried me in the backyard in a trash bag. It didn’t keep the worms away from my body. There’s only one thing that soothes away the pain. I could never have children, you see. I had a defective womb. My eggs weren’t right. There was nothing I can do. I was just born that way. But this bundle of pure joy in my arms, Deborah’s unborn child, erases the pain.”
Barbie finally turned around to face them. Crooked, broken boney hands clutched an infant clothed only in dried-up muscle tissue and bone. That little bone mouth was sucking on Barbie’s greened nipple. Out the nipple maggots flowed into the baby’s mouth. It kept sucking, sucking and sucking at the tit for the dead mother’s maggot milk.
The bulb in the room brightened into red.
Barbie smiled, steadying the decayed baby in her hands. “Once all goes red in this house, it’ll be too late. You will all be dead. You’ll keep me company. We’ll have wonderful stories to share with each other for all eternity. I love gossip.”
The room’s bulb went brighter, blinding Janet and the detective. When the red finally dimmed enough to open their eyes again, Barbie and the baby were both gone.
Janet stared at where the woman was last standing. “I don’t know what to make of this shit. It’s sounded like a promise of death to me. We’re not getting out of this house. How are we supposed to gather evidence to solve a ten-year-old crime when we’re trapped here? We don’t have witnesses, or testimony or access to records.”
Detective Larson couldn’t say anything to the contrary, except for one thing. “All we have is each other. Maybe that’s all we need. We’re going back downstairs. We have to talk to Morty and the rest of them and try again. There’s something we’re missing.”
“What was Barbie saying about when the red fills this house, we’re dead?”
Larson’s head ached. It always happened when he asked the same question repeatedly in his head and didn’t happen upon an answer.
“I don’t know, Janet. I could try to explain it, but it’s fucking confusing.”
They heard the loud and violent crashes in the hallway. The sound of bodies wrestling one another. Something growled. Then they heard Morty sound off in terror.
“Help me remove the barricade.”
Janet didn’t like the idea of facing off with what was out there.
The lights turned red again. Four corpses appeared. They were moving the dresser pushed up against the door. Detective Larson recognized the three men and the one woman. They were each hapless victims of Ted. People who were going to and from somewhere and unfortunately crossed paths with Ted.
“You must hurry.”
“Barbie’s right.”
“You’ll all be dead if you don’t put the facts together.”
When the barricade was removed, the corpses vanished.
“I can’t do this,” Janet insisted. “This is just too fucking much.”
“Do you have any better suggestions?”
“Yeah, we hide in here, and if anything comes at us, we shoot it.”
“If I’m not mistaken, I don’t have many bullets left, and your 9mm’s rattled off a few times already. The only way out is to investigate. You’re a reporter. You should be all over this.”
Larson didn’t have time for Janet’s hesitation.
“I’m going whether you’re coming with me or not. And in this house, you don’t want to be alone.”
The detective opened the door, bolted into the hallway and braced himself for whatever the house had to throw at him.
Chapter Forty-Six
Bruce hadn’t ever seen Morty make an expression like the one he was making now. Give me what I want. If you don’t, I’m going to hurt you. You know I mean it. I will hurt you. Cheyenne’s face was anticipatory. What did my mother do? Please don’t let it be that awful. Oh my God, I know it will be. Having faced off with a cop whose head exploded with water, and Glenda, whose body didn’t move an inch after collapsing from upstairs, Bruce feared nothing, not even his best friend’s scorn. This wasn’t his truth. This was Glenda’s truth. They were her secrets to own and to bear. There was no special way he could craft a story to remove the damaging elements. Bruce told the story the way he remembered it best.
“When I tell you this, I beg you to keep in mind it was just gossip at the time. Bullshit. I thought you always knew what people said behind your back about Glenda. Maybe you heard softer versions of the truth, maybe not. I don’t know. I just assumed you knew and didn’t care, Morty.
“I remember when Glenda moved into our school district. We were freshmen at the time. Glenda had moved from Kirkwood. You know Kirkwood, that small town about a six or seven hour drive from here. I had friends who lived in Kirkwood. They hung out with Glenda. She was only fourteen, but man, they had some wild stories to tell about her.
“I guess her super religious father did everything to keep Glenda out of trouble. Most teenagers rebel against their folks in that situation, but Glenda took it a step further. She snuck out of the house at night to meet with her buddies. Her buddies were a real bad crowd. Two of them were sixteen-year-olds. Another was twenty. I think the oldest was named Ryan Brundage. Bad people, man. Kirkwood was a very small town. Not a whole lot to do in that neck of the woods, right? They don’t cut the grass anymore in those parts, you get me?
“Well, these three guys, they start meeting up with Glenda after school. They talk her into hanging out with them on a regular basis. Glenda was pretty and looked older than her age. So Glenda, being repressed by her religious father, is fine with sneaking out of the house and getting high and drunk with these scumbag types. They smoke weed, drink bourbon and even dip their noses in cocaine. Glenda’s grades start to slip. She’s looking rough, because she’s doing drugs and not sleeping at night anymore.
“There was much more going on than drugs and drinking. The twenty-year-old, Ryan Brundage, the tried and true asshole, well, it turns out Ryan’s dad is a real piece of shit too. A bigger piece of shit even. A fucking piece of shit. His name is Louie Brundage. The fuckhead is an evening security guard at the local junkyard. He liked to sell drugs to kids. Small time guy. Piece of shit, end of story. I only know all of this because my cousin was friends with the people who hung out with this group. Like I said, my information is secondhand.
“So these guys take Glenda to Louie’s house one night. The boys don’t have any cash. They never have cash. Louie says it’s fine. He can take it out in trade. He gets to have sex with Glenda, and everybody gets free drugs. By then, Glenda’s addicted to this shit. She loves the drugs. She’ll do anything. And Glenda loves the power she had over Louie Brundage. Over the boys too. My cousin said Glenda really liked fucking the bastard for drug money. She’d go to the house and skip school to meet this guy alone and do other things with Louie. The rumors are harsh. I didn’t totally believe it. Looking at Glenda, you wouldn’t think. Turns out Louie let his son have turns with her too. And—”
“That’s total bullshit. My wife doing that shit? Listen to you, man. Do you believe it? I sure as hell don’t. No fucking way.”
Bruce wasn’t saying one way or the other if he believed it or not. “My cousin said—”
“Fuck your cousin.”
“—My cousin said Glenda was looking so ba
d and doing so much drugs at one point, she passed out in school. Her nose was bleeding and her heart was chugging a hundred miles an hour. Her father realizes what has happened. He can’t prove it. He can’t say who is behind it either. So he doesn’t go after anybody. Glenda’s father didn’t want the public, or anybody, knowing his daughter could do those things. So he moves away, puts Glenda into a new school and keeps a tight leash on her.
“Think about it, Morty. Why do you think you had such a hard time asking Glenda out to the prom? And when you got her pregnant, Glenda’s father went right to your parents’ house and made your folks do as they demanded. You quit school, started working full time and that was that. You had no say in it, Morty, because her father wouldn’t let you. I know it’s hearsay. If it wasn’t important, why was Officer Wright wanting me to mention it?
“And think on this. These corpses have been trapped in this house. I’m sure they’ve been talking to each other and trying to add things up about Deborah’s death like we’re trying to right now. They want out of this house. Glenda’s story means something.”
Morty scoffed. “Like what? That my wife was a drug-addicted slut when she was too young to be doing that kind of shit? That’s going to solve Deborah’s death? I don’t see what this has to do with Deborah at all.”
“It has to mean something. Why would Ted pull us through the door? Collectively, we have the answer, or they think we might have the answer. I don’t know, man.”
Morty refused to believe the things Bruce said about Glenda.
“Exactly. They think we might have an answer. They’re all dead, and crazy, and psychotic and don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing anymore. That’s what I believe. Not what you just said.”
Bruce cried out, “Stay back!”
There was Ted standing behind Cheyenne. He grabbed her from behind with both hands and dragged her towards the basement door.
