by Alan Spencer
The stairway and the walls were on fire.
“What the hell is going on up there?”
Morty tried to get a better look upstairs. The flames were too thick and intense to battle through.
“Janet and the detective are up there! They’re going to be burned alive.”
Bruce pulled him back. Morty was coughing against the smoke. He couldn’t breathe or see. Black smoke was choking the room.
Bruce was struggling to talk, losing himself to a fit of coughing. “We have to get out of here, and fast!”
Morty, sifting through the smoke, tried the living room door and beat against the windows. He had his eyes closed; it burned so bad to keep them open. Bruce had grabbed him by the arm in order not to lose track of him. All they had was each other at this point.
Unable to breathe, Morty was getting dizzy. Unable to see, he was completely blind. The two men kept searching for a way out.
They didn’t find a way out.
They fell into a way out.
Chapter Fifty
The upstairs hallway was ablaze one moment, then the next, it was raining—or so Larson thought. They were being pelted by something. Janet pointed through the thick of the flames at the bathroom door. There stood the dirt corpse woman. What remained of her exploded, and out of her body burst forth spinning clods of earth. So thick, so fast, so much, the dirt snuffed the flames. The detective could breathe again, but he was still shielding Janet from the dirt, because the pelting sheets kept coming harder and faster.
One moment, Larson was dodging dirt, the next, he was buried in it. Compacted by earth, he tried to swim against it. Eyes closed, mouth shut, head reeling from the confusion, Larson broke his fingernails, he fought so hard to free himself. How much longer before he suffocated? Where was he being buried?
Then he thought back to Morty and the tub full of dirt. Janet said he was forced into the dirt. Maybe Morty had been taken somewhere. Maybe they were being taken somewhere too.
What else did this house and these corpses have left for them?
How was this going to solve Deborah’s murder, being buried in dirt?
Reaching, swimming against a thick current, he thought he heard Janet calling out to him. Everything was going fuzzy. He needed air. His lungs were burning. His head was aching. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take before death set in.
“You’re almost there! I need you, Detective. You can’t die on me. Please don’t die on me!”
Larson opened his eyes because he finally could. Air, precious air, he gulped it down, gasping sharply between intakes. He looked up to see a pitch black sky. Janet was dirty from top to bottom. She looked a wreck. He probably looked worse.
He was on his feet again with the help of Janet pulling him up. They held onto each other, steadying one another. Thrown from one extreme to the next, their bodies forced them to take pause.
A tall wooden fence surrounded them. They were in a backyard. There was no sound except for a woman’s whistling.
It wasn’t Janet.
It was Barbie.
Barbie was on her knees pulling flowers from her garden. She was leaving the dead weeds behind and ripping out the flowers. Every time she uprooted a colorful flower, Barbie said, “There. That’s better. Those awful things keep popping up in my garden.”
Janet gasped. “My God.”
The sound drew Larson’s eyes to the plastic kiddie pool. Deborah’s unborn baby, mere bones and a thin layer of leathery flesh, was swimming in muddy black water. The baby was eating from a dead German Shepherd’s ribcage. The dog was chewing on the baby’s foot like a rawhide, gnawing at it with delight.
“God is on the other side of the red,” Barbie said, uprooting a tulip and crushing it in her hand. “God is certainly not here. Our savior is hosting parties elsewhere. This is Ted’s meet-up, and the party’s about to end. Sure, he’ll invite new guests after you, interrogate them too, and this will just keep on going forever. A vicious cycle. We hoped you guys could bring this to an end. I liked you guys. You’re innocent, like I was, before Ted got his hands on me. I only wanted to help Ted, and this is what I received. A lifetime of torment living in the red.”
Barbie’s words ebbed into sadness. She started ripping and smashing flowers at an accelerated speed.
“Everyone else has lost faith in you two. Forget Morty, that old dumbass, and his buddy, Bruce. Glenda had some juicy stories to tell, but as far as facts, she had very little to offer. Hannah’s story was just as juicy, and she’s as useful as a stuck pig. And Cheyenne Saggs was just a sniveling bitch. She got it real good. Worse than any of us. Ted got off on her suffering. He was inspired when he killed her.
“They were all relatively useless. Maybe they bought you two time. Perhaps that’s why they were brought here. Only to buy you two time.”
Barbie’s sobs started anew.
Deborah’s unborn baby paused from flensing the meat from the German Shepherd’s ribs and considered crying, but started eating the dog’s flesh with renewed verve instead.
“But you two, reporter and detective, I believed in you. I saw you two after you arrived here from the other side of the burning doorway, and I thought you were my ticket to Heaven. Surely together you guys would’ve come up with the answers to Deborah’s death. Your failure hasn’t changed how I feel about this place. I can’t go anywhere else. I can’t leave, I can only stay and wither. I would prefer to go to Hell. At least I could see new things and new people.”
Barbie sobbed harder.
“No, no, no—I’m a good person! The red can’t take that away from me. I’m going to Heaven. I will rest in peace. I have suffered enough. I can’t wait on more people to attempt to solve Deborah’s death. You were our best shot, because everybody else who’s going to be sucked into this hell won’t have a clue who that dead bitch is.
“I want out of here, and I’m not alone. There’s so many out here in the red. It goes beyond this house. Can you hear their suffering?”
The black sky turned into a burning charcoal briquette. The sky was a smoldering cinder. A bright ember kissed by oxidation.
Tears fell down Larson and Janet’s eyes. The red wasn’t as bright, but it was intense. The red was the color of suffering. Red was the color of eternal damnation. And the two of them realized because they had failed, they kept the innocent in the red.
Larson couldn’t accept it.
“How much time do we have left before our chance is up?”
Janet didn’t understand why he was asking the question. She stayed quiet. Afraid, more like it.
Barbie beheld the burning sky. “You’re almost down to nobody. There’s very little time you have left.”
“I want back in there,” Larson said. Something in his gut said if he had another opportunity, he could find that detail, and link one clue with another and the answer would hit him. “I’m going in there. If you don’t want to go, Janet, I understand, but I could use your help.”
“But what did we miss? We searched, we put our heads together and we came up with nothing. What else is there?”
“I know Deborah’s bedroom like the back of my hand. There was nothing new the second time I looked tonight. The same with the kitchen or living room; there’s nothing new. The basement is Ted’s workshop. You’d think if there were any clues, Ted would’ve stumbled upon them. He spent many nights down there.”
“So where do we look?”
“The second bedroom’s the only place.”
“But we searched that room.”
“We didn’t get a chance to search every storage box. Those are their belongings. Maybe there’s a clue in the boxes. We have to give it another shot. It’s the only choice we have. Or would you rather wait for Ted to come after us and slaughter us? Think on that. We can’t beat him. He’s been shot by our guns, and it did nothing. This
isn’t a place where the rules of life and death apply. Our only way to fight back is to keep looking. Even down to the wire.”
Barbie was standing up. She crept near them. Her rotting, disgusting body was bathed by the light of the red sky.
“We are down to the wire. I like your determination. The only problem is, everybody else counting on you has lost hope. They won’t let you back into the house. They think you can’t do a fucking thing for them. And they may be right.”
Larson studied the house. The window shades were open. Huddles of dead corpses watched them with disdain. Hannah was among them, as were ten of the officers (mutilated, and many headless), and Ted’s fourteen original victims, minus two, counting Barbie and Deborah’s unborn child.
Barbie’s eyes were heavy.
“We’re not getting inside that house. They’ll kill you.”
Janet was hit hard by the words.
“She’s right, Detective. There’s too many of them. We’ll be dead in seconds.”
Larson checked his clip.
Four bullets remained.
“How many shots you have in that 9mm?”
Janet checked the clip.
“I’m down to two rounds.”
Barbie’s lips curled into a macabre smile. “You could have a thousand bullets, and it wouldn’t matter.”
“Hey, we only need to slow them down. If we can get them off of our asses, we can get back upstairs and search again. We have to try, damn it.”
Larson didn’t like the way Barbie had given them a death sentence. None of the people forced through the doorway asked to be sent here, nor did Ted’s victims. Nobody had a right to give up. They had so much to fight for. Heaven, Hell, back to living life again, those options were all better than the red.
“So what if they kill us? We’re dead anyway if we don’t solve this case. Ted’s not going to let us go. We’re dead. Let’s pretend we’re goners. Fuck it. Fuck them, fuck the situation and fuck you, Barbie, for giving up on yourself. Yeah, go ahead, feel sorry for yourself. Cry into the red sky, weep for your lost life, let’s all play host to the pity party. Fuck that. I’m getting in that house, and we’re searching for clues. If they’re going to stand in our way, if they’re too stupid to help us, if they’re so caught up in their own agonies that common sense has fled their minds, then I guess we’re going to have to plow right through them.”
Janet was taken aback by the detective’s speech.
Then Janet went off on him.
“Plow right through them? Your macho talk solves nothing. We’re fucking dead. I mean, look at them in the windows. They’re chomping at the bit to rip us a new one. The second we step in there, whether we have an M-16, or sticks and stones, or courageous words, we’re dead meat.”
“She’s right,” Barbie said. “What can we do against them? I’m the only one who still believes in you, and I’m slipping. The longer you talk, the more hopeless it sounds.”
The baby and the dog were done chewing on each other. The baby was paddling in the water and blowing bubbles at the surface. The dog had stepped out of the tub and started to dig a hole in the yard with both its front paws.
Larson was grateful for Barbie’s flicker of hope in them, but the way she was talking, he had to sway this woman to their side again. Everything was about buying time. Enacting a plan. Saving themselves.
Larson had a wife and three kids. Their youngest had left the roost for college six months ago. They had the house to themselves, and it was like someone re-lit the candle of their romance. He was swooning over his wife. He fell in love with Angela all over again. Larson also knew Janet had a husband, and she was so young. Her life was ahead of her.
Ted’s insanity was going to stop them from living their lives.
Ted’s insanity wasn’t going to force the dead from their peaceful slumber.
This had to end now, and he was the one to make it happen.
Barbie watched the dog dig happily into the hole until the dog buried itself. The dog was scared of what was to come. The baby stayed underwater in hiding.
“I’m this close to giving up on you,” Barbie said. “Give me a reason to help you. That’s all I want. I feel rage overtaking my soul. The red in the sky is changing me…and it keeps changing me. Make it good, and make it fast. Convince me not to kill you.”
Larson and Janet were terrified. Barbie started gnawing on the tips of her fingers, eating off the leathery skin, and exposing tracks of pearl-white bone. Her teeth carved the tips of her bone fingers into daggers.
“I want to claw out your eyes. I want you to scoop out your brains. I want to drink your blood and feast on your insides. Curse you for damning me to the red forever! You were our only chance! GODDAMN YOU!”
“Stop it, would you, lady?” Larson stepped between Barbie and Janet in case the dead woman went off on them. “I investigated Ted Lindsey. I lived, breathed and shit Ted Lindsey to solve Deborah’s murder case. I have an idea, if you’d stop chewing on your fucking fingers for a second and threatening to eat our insides.”
Barbie’s maniacal face didn’t change.
She still wanted to eat their insides, but Barbie stopped chewing on her fingers for a moment.
“Ted Lindsey was a handyman. A fixer upper guy. There’s something good in that shed behind you. It’s a fine piece of work. I remember searching the shed during the investigation.”
Janet grabbed him by the arm. “What’s in the shed?”
Larson whispered to Janet, “I’ll show you. But watch Barbie.”
He spoke up again. “I’m going to the shed. I have a plan. I’m going to show you, okay, Barbie?”
Barbie snarled in response. She had her fingers together, considering the many possibilities on how to kill them.
The red painted wooden shed wasn’t too far away, but the walk felt like it took forever to complete as the decayed woman stalked after them.
Larson used the butt of his pistol to bust the padlock.
The detective opened the door of the shed and showed them how they were going to get into the house.
Chapter Fifty-One
Morty’s face was flat against cold concrete when he came to again. He didn’t smell fire anymore, and he wasn’t choking on smoke. Morty forced himself to stand. Bruce was already on his feet looking at something across the room. Bruce noticed Morty get up, and he rushed to his friend’s side.
“You don’t want to see this, Morty. Stand back.”
The details of the room registered fast. The broken bricks scattered about the floor, the table covered in blood and nails, they were in the basement.
“Don’t look. Ted’s a monster. How could he do this?”
Morty’s eyes searched the room. It was hard to see against the red of the light bulb. Everything was covered in the harsh color.
“Not over there, Morty. Spare yourself. It’s horrible. She didn’t deserve any of this. Nobody does.”
“Cheyenne!”
Morty saw her on the floor with her back against the wall. Parts of her right hand were missing, it having been yanked free from the nail pinions on the tabletop. Ted had tortured her. He had desecrated his daughter.
“Bastard, where are you? Face me, Ted. I’ll kill you myself!”
“Calm down, Morty. Please. I need you. If you break down, I can’t do this by myself.”
“I’m not calming down. LOOK WHAT HE DID TO MY PRECIOUS DAUGHTER.”
The sight was so gruesome, Morty fell onto his knees several feet from his daughter’s body. The life was deflated from him.
“I’m so, so sorry…”
Cheyenne’s head was slumped down in a death pose. Between her legs, the shadows were merciful. The pool of blood oozing there painted the picture the shadows failed to produce. Morty thought Ted had raped her until he spotted a dildo with spikes jutting fr
om both sides of it laying next to her body. As if she’d ripped it out of herself, then died.
Ted had used it on Cheyenne.
He desecrated Cheyenne’s womanhood.
It was the worst thing for a father to see.
“…so…so sorry…”
Morty’s weeping changed into fury. He got up, wanting nothing more than for Ted to materialize so Morty could beat the shit out of him. He had failed to protect Glenda, and now his daughter was dead too. As a father, as a husband, Morty was useless.
Bruce had been talking the whole time Morty mourned his daughter, giving condolences and commiserations with added promises of revenge. Morty didn’t hear a single word. He could only apologize to his daughter. The corpse he couldn’t stand to look at. Cheyenne, so defiled.
“My wife and daughter are dead. What’s the point, Bruce? My family is gone. Who cares about Ted?”
Bruce was horrified.
“Are you giving up? I’m alive. You’re alive. Wake up, Morty. Ted needs to be stopped. He’ll only kill more people.”
“Then what do we do? Search this house, look for clues to a murder we won’t solve, and then wait for Ted to kill us anyway?”
Bruce steadied his breath. He had so much anger. He was also pale and weak. The night had been hard on his old friend.
Morty asked Bruce again, “Huh, what do we do, old pal?”
“We’re not detectives. We could be standing on the evidence that points to the killer, and we wouldn’t know it. I say let him come to us, Morty. We’ll take him on together. He can’t take us both on at once.”
“Sure he can.” Morty knew his friend was light in the head. Blood loss did that to people. Desperation did that to people. “You’re forgetting he’s dead. How can you kill someone who’s deceased? What do we do? There’s no way around this shit. We’re dead. We’re fucked. I failed my family.”
Bruce took the blow of Morty’s words. His friend agreed. They weren’t going to survive.
The prolonged silence between friends was as painful as anything else the two had endured in the past twenty-four hours.
