The Slab

by Michael R Collings

  Then, at the beginning of the eighth week…the whispered movement of the door, so quiet as to have been almost silent but even so more than enough to awaken Miles to a panicky tightness in his chest and a clammy sweat oozing through his pores. Then he felt the familiar, hated hand tightening over his mouth. The other hand (even more familiar, even more hated, if that were possible) scrabbling at the waistband of his pajamas.

  Miles had refused to wear only underpants to bed for nearly three years, regardless of how hot it might be. No matter how much Elayne had argued about it as she bathed swathes of prickly heat rash along his shoulders and stomach during the frequent 100+ temperatures of July and August, he refused to sleep in anything lighter than full-length, long-sleeved, winter-weight flannel pajamas. Elayne could not understand why. Miles himself could probably not have explained why. Perhaps somewhere, deep in his mind where the horror remained submerged hour upon hour, he held out the frantic hope that the thick flannel might somehow protect him.

  But it never did.

  Now, after almost two months of blessed loneliness, when the soft, damp hand touched his quivering skin he knew that everything he had hoped to believe had been a lie. The visits were beginning again.

  Only now, it was much worse for the boy. Since turning thirteen, Miles’ unwanted but undeniable physical reactions to Daniel’s depredations had intensified. He didn’t want them to; God knew that he despised himself more each time, condemned himself to a deeper level of his own private hell every time his body leaped from his conscious control and responded wildly, almost eagerly to the man’s filthy touch.

  But it did respond.

  Now even his always fragile sleep was infected by the nightmare visits. He would awaken to hear Daniel closing the door. Knowing that this was real, that he could not awaken from this nightmare, Miles would look up to see Daniel glowing ghostly in the leaden moonlight, leaning over his bed. He would feel Daniel’s rapid touches like a million insects crawling across his naked skin.

  And then later-hours later sometimes, each tolled second by wearisome second by Miles’ Big Ben alarm clock ticking metronomically on the nightstand-Miles would finally stumble into fevered sleep…

  And in that sleep, something new, a phantom Daniel, ghastly and loathsome in the stark shadows of slanting moonlight in the corner bedroom, would return.

  6

  Age thirteen shaded imperceptibly into fourteen. There were few changes in the Warrens’ lives, mostly superficial. Daniel contracted for a company to come in and convert the two-car garage into a wide, roomy family room, and to construct an adjoining garage along the side of the property. The garage held Elayne’s aging station wagon, sitting sedately next to an series of new, sporty vehicles for Daniel. Miles had a bicycle that was new when they moved in but that was now covered with a thick layer of dust and rested rather sadly against the far wall on two long-flat tires.

  Elayne never complained that her car still stuttered sometimes, or that it continued to make unpleasant noises. She was far too content with her life as she was leading it to let minor inconveniences interrupt. She spent much of her day time in the sewing room making clothing for friends’ children and amassing a wardrobe for the babies she was still sure would eventually come to her and Daniel.

  Evenings the three of them spent in the new room, to all appearances a happy, stereotypical Southern California family. They watched television, or read, or played games…usually two-handed card games between Elayne and Daniel. Miles never seemed interested in cards.

  And if occasionally Miles chose to huddle morosely at one of the sofa or curl up bonelessly in the recliner, well, wasn’t that usual for teenagers, especially teenage boys? Moody, temperamental, unpredictable?

  Neither Daniel nor Elayne knew-or perhaps would have cared to know-that at night Miles was beginning to inhabit a twisted never-never-land that felt as real as the waking world he shared with his mother and Daniel. In fact, the ugly phantasms of his dream-world became incrementally more vivid, more frightening than the painful, mortifying midnight visits he endured. As the months and years passed, Miles slept less and less each night. Most of the time he lay huddled beneath the covers, his eyes little more than black points in the night. In his desperate struggles to avoid the spectral world of sleep, he came almost to welcome the flesh-and-blood Daniel.

  Almost.

  Elayne finally noted with some concern that the boy seemed too thin and drawn. She saw that he was almost as tall as Daniel and his voice was cracking and dropping more every day, and that a skiff of what just might become whiskers had darkened his cheeks and chin-but in spite of these physical evidences of increasing maturity, he remained strangely childlike. He was increasingly withdrawn, introverted. She tried to talk with him one day.

  “Are you feeling well, Miles?” she asked over breakfast. He was supposed to leave for school in a few minutes.

  “I’m okay,” he answered, staring into a bowl of rapidly disintegrating Cheerios.

  “You don’t look well. You look…tired.”

  He looked up at her. At his mother, this woman who bore him and then who married that bastard and even now didn’t know (couldn’t know!) what was going on in another bedroom in the darkness of midnight. For an instant his vision blurred and a voice said tell her, she’s your mother, she loves you, in spite of what he says she’ll understand that it wasn’t your fault, that it was never your fault, that you didn’t know any better back then and that now you do and you want him to stop to stop to stopstopstop.

  “Mom,” he said. His voice crackled from bass to treble and back again. “Mom, I…”

  Daniel Warren swept into the room. Five years had changed him little. At thirty-seven, he was still successful. His two dealerships had split to become four; he now spent much of his time on the road traveling from San Fernando to Coastal Crest to Ventura to Santa Barbara checking in with the managers at each location. He still dressed expensively, and his tailored clothing complemented his body well. He took good care of his body. It was taut and muscular, younger looking than his age. His mother was proud of how well he had kept himself, even though he no longer came over every Sunday afternoon for dinner. And he smiled a lot, a secretly self-satisfied smile that most people seemed to enjoy but that filled Miles’ throat with bile that burned like acid.

  The man kissed Miles’ mother on the lips, then crossed around the table to run his hand through Miles’ hair. Miles tried to duck away and felt the fingers tighten momentarily on his hair, not much, not enough for his mother to notice but enough for him to feel and to understand that Daniel was still in charge. Totally in charge.

  “I won’t be back until later tonight,” Daniel said softly to Elayne. His voice betrayed none of the pent-up tension that communicated itself like an electrical current through his fingers to Miles’ scalp. The man sounded for all the world like a normal father talking to a normal mother.

  Elayne looked up sharply and opened her mouth as if to speak. Daniel cut her off without appearing to do so.

  “Sorry, hon. We’ve got a manager’s conference in Ventura this afternoon. It may take a couple of hours.” He walked away from the table. “Love you,” he added as he took his briefcase and slipped out the kitchen door into the garage. The door closed behind him.

  A moment later the whine of the electric garage opener-the first installed on Oleander Place-served notice that Daniel Warren was preparing to leave. Elayne toyed with a wedge of toast in front of her. Miles’ Cheerios were drowned beyond redemption, but he forced himself to eat a soggy spoonful anyway.

  The garage door opener whined again as the door dropped, and the tiger roar of Daniel’s brand-new electric blue Corvette died away down Oleander before Elayne spoke again.

  “We’re so lucky, Miles.” She concentrated on stirring her cooling coffee. “Daniel takes such good care of us.”

  Considering what Miles had been about to say to her, he could only stare at his mother. She lifted her eyes and looked
directly into his.

  “I don’t know if I could take it…you know, having to be alone like that again. Working all the time. Wondering if we were going to go hungry next week, or where the rent payment was coming from. If I thought something, or someone was coming between us”-meaning herself and Daniel, Miles understood at once-“I’d do anything, anything to keep him. Anything. ”

  She rose and set her empty plate and coffee mug in the sink. Her jelly-and-butter-smudged knife rattled a long, clattering dirge as it fell onto the porcelain. When she turned and stared at her son, her eyes held a strange expression that struck Miles as coldly across the face as a physical blow.

  “What did you want to say to me, Miles?” she asked sweetly.

  “Mom…,” he began. Then: “Nothing. I’m all right.” They never spoke of his looking tired again.

  But as his fourteen year closed-the fifth since they had moved into the house on Oleander Place-Miles slept less and less.

  7

  The real dream-the dream beneath the dream, the one that nearly drove Miles mad with terror each time it began-started shortly after that discussion with Elayne, in late October of 1997.

  The first time it came, Miles was not asleep in his bed. He lay naked on the floor of his room, his body curled into a tight ball, with his knees touching his chest, nearly touching his chin. His hands were clasped tightly over his shins, as if by holding on to each other they could create a lock against pain and fear and self-hatred and despair.

  Daniel had just left. Miles knew that he should get back into his bed, that he should pull on his crumpled flannel pajamas and climb between the sheets that for almost every other fifteen-year-old in the world would mean warmth and comfort and peace but that for him had become synonymous with horror. He knew that if Daniel found him lying naked on the carpet in the morning, the next visit would be worse-Daniel had already warned him about such things.

  No use taking any chances that your mother might happen to drop in early and see something she shouldn’t and get worried, right.

  Miles knew that Daniel was capable of inflicting exquisite pain without leaving visible marks. The thought of punishment from that man chilled the boy. But tonight, the coldness sweeping over his spine felt uniquely right. Maybe he would catch pneumonia and burn with fever and cough his bloody lungs out and die. Maybe…

  He lay with his head against the rough carpet. A thin line of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Tell your mother you slipped going to the bathroom and hit the door jamb, Daniel had warned just before he left, She’ll believe that. She knows you’re a clumsy little shit.

  It wasn’t the first time that Daniel’s visits had left Miles bleeding, but such occurrences were blissfully rare. Usually Miles tried to remove any evidence of blood-and so far Elayne had not noticed anything untoward. Tonight, though, he simply didn’t care. Let the bastard find me like this and kill me. Let her come in and see me naked and bloody on the flood and then try to pretend that everything’s just hunky-dory, her and Mr. Perfect.

  His anger warmed him, even as he realized with a distant, almost disconnected part of his mind that the temperature in the room was dropping precipitously. His exposed skin crawled into goose bumps and he shivered violently. The movement caused a ripple of pain through him.

  The blood thinned to a viscous drop that hung suspended at the corner of his mouth before dropping heavily to the carpet. Already the thick pile of the dark brown shag had absorbed most of the blood. Miles realized dimly that no one would even notice the stain by the time the blood dried.

  No one but him.

  His tongue brushed a cut in the inside of his cheek. The movement stung, but he chose to ignore it. For a moment, he stiffened. He thought he heard something in the hall. He raised his head an inch or two from the carpet and listened. It could be Daniel returning to make sure Miles was “safely in bed.” It might be his mother, although he could count on the fingers of one hand the times she had awakened during the night and come in to check on him. He wasn’t sure which prospect was the more inviting, which the more terrifying.

  After a long moment, he decided that there had been no sound. He must have imagined it. He dropped his head to the carpet again. His ear rested on a rough, slight, unseen ridge only partially buffered by the thickness of carpet and pad.

  The crack in the slab started in the corner of his room and arced across the center to disappear beneath the closet door. Miles had discovered the irregular edge only a few weeks after they had moved in. He spoke to no one about it. Sometimes he would spend long hours running his fingers along the phantom crack; sometimes he half believed that he could see the precise place where the floor started angling oh so marginally downward toward the far wall.

  Tonight, he felt an odd comfort in lying against the crack, feeling its shadowy reality as a jagged line beneath his body. He lay without moving, his eyes closed, his heart thumping.

  And finally he fell asleep.

  The nightmare intruded almost immediately. It began like all of the others-a phantom Daniel silently opening a phantom door. The phantom-not-phantom hands. The roving and clutching and groping, and the pain. But then…suddenly there was someone else with them in the darkened room. At first Miles couldn’t tell anything about the shadowy figure-not its age or its sex or its size. He just knew without knowing how that someone stood behind Daniel.

  At the critical moment in the dream-Daniel’s frenzy, the dream-Miles saw something glistening in a white-lightning arc, and Daniel’s head jerked back as a soundless scream of unutterable agony exploded from between his teeth. A jet of burning blood followed. Daniel threw his head forward, eyes wild with a terror that kindled joy like a raging flame throughout Miles’ whole being. For an instant. Then the dream-Daniel’s head struck the dream-Miles’ forehead, and there was an eternity of exquisite pain and Miles thought he would die for certain, and then Daniel’s head exploded, nearly suffocating Miles in a flood of red blood and grey tissue.

  The dream-Miles felt Daniel’s body twisting on top of him, writhing in an intensity of bleak sensation that had nothing to do with sexual passion. Out of one blood-curtained eye, Miles saw a glinting, silver-white thing rise and sweep downward again. Daniel’s body quivered. Another rise and fall. Another quiver, like the legs of the dead frogs Miles galvanized for an experiment in science class earlier that fall. Another sickening rise and fall-this time less silvery white than mottled red…and now Miles felt the first slice of pain across his abdomen.

  The dream-Daniel fell away like two halves of a dead, rotten husk, parts of his body propped bloodily on each side of Miles. Now the boy could see clearly the curve of the long knife suspended at the apex of its swing directly above his groin. And he could see the thing that held it.

  The blade descended with a deliberateness that must have been the dream equivalent of slow motion but that served only to prolong the terror, the anticipation of the sharp pain it must bring. Miles brought his hands together. They moved in normal time, two fluttering white-stained-red birds rubbing wing to wing as his dream-self pleaded with the monster above him…pleaded for one more minute, one more second of life.

  The blade continued inexorably downward. The movement was still horrifyingly slow, but the dream-Miles intuited at once the hideous force behind blow. His dream-hands flew faster and faster, his skin abrading as his palms scored each other, as his fingers flickered long and white, in and out of shadows.

  The blade was almost to his groin. The steel glinted wickedly in a light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Then the light transformed from silver to red and he screamed in an agony that transcended any he had ever imagined-his throat tore open with the intensity and blood washed into his lungs and added its fire to his gasping breaths. His hands flared liquid flame, a beam of living fire that scored the blade just as it severed his flesh. His hands flew apart and the raging flames spilled over him, over the rotting remains of the dream-Daniel’s body, over the blood-stained c
arpet.

  He felt tongues of flames licking at his flesh. He twisted his head in anguish as the fire consumed him. Above it all, beyond all the pain and the terror and the torment, the nightmare figure retreated, laughing silently.

  Noooo! the dream-Miles screamed, one final burst of life…

  …and Miles shuddered violently awake, his skin soaked and sticky with his own sweat, and his arms and legs as rigidly cold as blocks of ice. For an instant he heard the lingering dream-scream. Then he rolled slightly and felt the stiff nap of carpet against his back-even stiffer where his blood had soaked into the fibers and was now part of the carpet itself, perhaps had even filtered through the pad beneath and oozed thickly into the crack and from there descended to the waiting bowels of the earth itself.

  He sat up. Big Ben said 2:15. Barely half an hour since Daniel-the real, flesh-and-blood Daniel-had left. Miles struggled to his feet, his body stiff with cold and pain. He shuffled over to his bed and dropped heavily onto the mattress. Still awash with sweat that stank of fear, still naked but for once uncaring, he burrowed into the covers and slept as if dead.

  8

  From then on until the end, that nightmare repeated itself nearly every night regardless of whether Daniel visited or not, regardless of whether Miles lay asleep in his bed or (as happened more frequently) curled fetus-like on the carpet. As bedtime approached, Miles would shower, dry off, and dress in his long pajamas, brush his teeth, and then-irregularly at first but with an increasing consistency that even he realized bordered on sheer obsessiveness-walk through the kitchen and the living room before going to his bed.