The Slab

by Michael R Collings

  White-faced and frightened, the children were sitting on the bunk, arranged in age and size from Will at the farther end to Sams at the nearer. Catherine crossed in front of them, and with a few judicious swipes of her hand scraped the brown crust from the table top. She wadded the cloth and dropped it in the waste basket by the table.

  “Mom,” Will began. Suze and Burt had opened their mouths to speak, as well. Sams sat stonily on the edge of the bunk, his blanket jammed against his cheek.

  “I…I don’t think we should say anything until Daddy gets back. He…I… Let’s just wait for him.”

  The next few minutes passed in painful, devastating silence.

  9

  “Now,” Willard said, half-sitting on the table, precisely where the cage had stood. “Let’s have the truth.”

  Catherine noticed that the back of the jeans he was now wearing was darker than the rest. The table top must still have been wet. Willard either didn’t feel the dampness or he didn’t care.

  It took a moment for what he had just said to filter through her mind. When it did, she stared at him in disbelief.

  “Willard, you can’t…”

  “The truth now. All of it.” With one hand he sliced at the air between him and Catherine-peremptorily, she thought-meaning Stay out of this.

  The four children hadn’t moved.

  They hadn’t spoken either, neither to Catherine while Willard was gone nor to him when he stalked back into the room.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Daddy, where’s Yap?” That from Burt-he was probably the closest thing to a “master” the hamsters had had. Will, Jr., had his dog, Crud; Suze had her dolls; and Sams had his blanket.

  “Gone.” Willard’s jaws clenched with the word.

  “Gone? Where? We haven’t had his funer…”

  “There won’t be a funeral for him, for it. ” His eyes flashed, cutting off whatever Burt-and Will and Suze-was about to say. Sams disappeared further behind his blanket. Even he could tell that Daddy was mad, madder than ever before.

  “There won’t be a funeral, and there won’t ever be another hamster in this house. That I can promise you. Maybe never even another pet.”

  “But Crud…”

  “Be quiet.”

  Will, Jr., closed his mouth and bit his lips.

  Catherine tried again. “Willard…”

  “Be quiet, all of you. There’s something I’m going to say, and I want you all to listen to it. Very carefully. Understand?”

  The children nodded. Catherine started to speak but a glance from her husband warned her that this was not the time to disagree with him.

  “Something happened here last night. To that hamster. I want to know what it was,” Willard said.

  Silence. A long silence.

  “I’m not going away until I find out. Nobody leaves this room until I find out. First Yip, and now this.

  “ What the hell happened?”

  The kids exchanged terrified glances-it seemed that they were as frightened of speaking up to their father as they were about what had happened during the night…who or what had killed the hamster.

  “I was asleep the whole night,” Burt finally said.

  “And so was I,” Suze added. “I was asleep right here”-she patted Burt’s bed-“and I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Asleep,” Sams’ added timidly. “Asleep the whole night.”

  Willard swiveled his head to face his eldest. “I guess that leaves you, Will, unless one of the others is lying. Are they?”

  “I, uh…” Three sets of eyes were riveted on him. He could see how close the younger kids were to tears. Yap was dead, and now Daddy was acting like this. Daddy never acted like this.

  “You, uh, what?”

  “I didn’t see anything, either. I slept through the night, too. When I got up this morning, I went over to feed Yap and saw…and saw…him. I didn’t know what to do. We promised Mom last night that we would be quiet when we got up this morning so you could sleep late.”

  “Thanks.” The sarcasm in the word was so heavy that even Suze seemed to know something was wrong. Will, Jr., visibly flinched. Only Sams seemed oblivious.

  “Um, I stood there watching for a long time, then Suze came over, and Burt. And then Sams, and he started crying, and then we were all crying and…and we couldn’t help it, we wanted you guys to come in and…and help us…and make everything right.”

  By then tears were streaming down Will, Jr., cheeks.

  “Make everything right? And how in the hell was I supposed to do that!”

  Will winced, swallowed, and tried to continue. “I think…I think it was him. You know…the man.”

  Burt and Suze nodded slowly in agreement. Sams said, “The man. The man in the dark.”

  Willard’s hand slammed against the table. The crack startled everyone, perhaps even Willard, since he raised his hand almost immediately and seemed to study it for a moment.

  When he spoke again, his voice was tight, controlled, as frosty as an iceberg.

  “The man you see at night? The naked man?”

  The children nodded. They had no words at this point.

  “ There is no man in here!” Willard stomped to the closet and tore armful after armful of shirts and coats and school pants from their hangers and flung them onto the floor. “ There’s nothing in here! There never was!

  “Now I want to know which one of you killed that hamster!”

  “Willard!” Catherine’s voice cut through his like a saber, quick and sharp to his bludgeoning broadsword. “Willard Huntley, I want to talk to you. Now!”

  She grabbed his arm with a strength she didn’t know she possessed-certainly Willard had never felt anything like it in their entire married life-and pulled him so hard that he almost lost his footing.

  “Outside. Now! And you four stay in here. Don’t any of you move.”

  Catherine and Willard disappeared through the door and down the hall.

  Behind them came the soft sounds of sobbing. Sounds that grew louder and louder.

  10

  She finally stopped yanking on his arm when they stood at the corner of the back yard, behind the garage and right below the eight-foot slump-stone fence that separated their yard from their neighbor’s.

  “I can’t believe that. I don’t believe that. You just accused your own children of killing their pet!”

  “Let go of my arm.” Every word slow, carefully enunciated. “Now.”

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but let me tell you…”

  Craaack!

  With his free hand Willard swung furiously and struck Catherine sharply, viciously across the face. For a moment she froze, not even breathing, uncomprehending, unbelieving.

  “Let…go…of…my…arm.” Not a syllable had changed tone or pitch.

  She dropped her hand. Without a word, she spun on her heels and strode into the house, slamming the door behind her. Willard heard the lock click.

  Stunned, he crumpled against the garage wall.

  What had he done?

  He had never struck Catherine, never struck any of the children. Certainly not in anger.

  Certainly not in the rage of fury that had overwhelmed him while talking with the children.

  His head throbbed.

  And his hand hurt, stung, burned like he had thrust it into an open flame.

  He slumped to the ground.

  What was happening to him? To them?

  The house.

  Everything had begun to go to hell when they bought this damned house, with its shattered foundation and its disintegrating slab and its web-work of cracks crisscrossing every damned wall in the place.

  And now it was shattering him.

  Him and his marriage.

  Catherine would never talk to him again. Would never love him again.

  11

  Nothing was easy.

  It wasn’t easy to get back into the house. Every door, every window he
tried was locked, solidly, as if barred by solid oak instead of cheap tract-home plywood. He stood by the front door for perhaps five minutes, then turned and trudged down the drive.

  It took two hours and a long walk through the Charter Oaks subdivision, following one twining street after another, before he even began to feel a bit like himself. Before his breath calmed and he realized with even greater clarity the horrendous step he had just taken.

  In an instant, everything in his life seemed to have changed.

  Changed, nothing! It was a full-out train wreck!

  He had struck his wife.

  As he walked, however, he gradually began noticing things. Perhaps it was his obsession revealing itself to the rational part of is mind. Perhaps it was just that his eyes were finally opened.

  Everywhere- everywhere- in almost every house, across almost every stretch of sidewalk, every length of drive, he spotted flaws. The corner of one house was literally crumbling away a few inches above the ground, the cement flaking off like layers of too-thick make-up peeling from the cheeks of some ancient hag. In another, every window had thin, spidering lines like age-wrinkles fanning from each corner, some masked by meandering splotches of plaster, others fresh and jagged, painfully black against the stucco. This one had a long front eave that sagged in the center, making the entire place look off-kilter. That one was as sway-backed as an aging nag, its roof line slumping tiredly, as if weighed down by the decades.

  It came as a shock. It wasn’t just their house. It was every house on every block.

  It wasn’t just him.

  When he finally returned to the house at the end of Oleander Place, he found the front door unlocked. That was a good sign, at least.

  He moved quietly down the hallway until he stood in front of the back bedroom. The door was closed but he could hear the subdued murmuring of voices inside. He couldn’t understand any of the words-it sounded like ghosts whispering through the labyrinth of dead branches in some midnight cemetery. Rising, falling, rising, falling, but never quite emerging into articulated speech.

  He didn’t try opening the door. He tapped with one finger on the smooth surface. Click. Click. Click.

  The sounds inside ceased. He felt that he could almost hear five hearts thrumming just on the other side, could share the ache of hot, pent-up breath in five waiting breasts.

  “Catherine.” Barely audible-but shatteringly loud in the silence. “I…I’m sorry. Please. Can we talk.”

  Nothing from inside the room.

  “Please.”

  Not even the rustle of bed clothing shifting beneath the fragile weight of a child’s body.

  “I’ll be in the family room.” That way, if she wanted to, or if one of the children needed something, she could skirt him completely and still go to the kitchen and back.

  “I’ll wait as long as you want.”

  It was nearly an hour later when she appeared in the doorway from the front entry. One second the space was empty and cold-the next, there she was, stock-still…and cold.

  He stood up but did not move toward her. He started to speak, then halted. He would wait for her to make the first move.

  “If you ever speak like that about my children”- my children, not our children-“or so much as threaten to strike me, or them, you will never see any of us again. Ever.” Cold, dispassionate yet resonant with anger and hurt and, even now, disbelief. “Believe it.”

  “I know.”

  They remained like that for several long minutes.

  Finally, he felt like he could break the silence. “Saying ‘sorry’ isn’t enough. Not nearly enough. If I could take back everything, run the clock back to this morning when the kids’ needed me, I would. I would do anything to change what happened.”

  She waited.

  “I don’t know what got into me. You know I’m not like that, I’m not that person. It was…it was like someone else was talking through my mouth, acting through my body.”

  “Like something in the dark terrifying our children?” At least it was our children again.

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  Catherine hesitated, then crossed the room and sat stiffly on one end of the sofa.

  Willard sat on the other.

  After a silence that was still uncomfortable but no longer inhibiting, they talked.

  12

  Later, Catherine brought the children into the kitchen, where she laid out chocolate milk and cookies for each of them while Willard sat in his usual place at the head of the table and, speaking carefully to each of them in turn, apologized for what had happened that morning.

  Then the entire family got into the car and went to the park for the rest of the afternoon.

  No one ever mentioned the episode again. No one ever mentioned Yap, either.

  13

  For a few days, the atmosphere in the house lightened, ever so slightly. While the kids remained aloof from their father, they didn’t go out of their way to avoid him, either. But they were clearly more comfortable when their mother was around as well, to act as a buffer if…

  Catherine and Willard were still demonstrably cool around each other, as well, neither forgetting but neither indulging in further recriminations. Theirs was a patient, hopeful truce. With time, this rift could heal. Maybe.

  Until early on the morning of the last Saturday in July.

  The kids had gone to bed earlier than usual, for some reason subdued and restrained during the evening, even in their play. They went right to sleep.

  Catherine and Willard stayed up until just before midnight, occasionally talking, more often simply sitting next to each other on the family room couch and watching-not-watching television. One might reach out and touch the other’s knee and receive a small pat on the hand. One might lean into the other for a second, then straighten and resume watching whatever program happened to be on.

  It felt as if everything would be all right, sooner rather than later.

  They went to bed at around midnight, made love for the first time in more days than either could remember-quietly, tenderly, their words of repentance and forgiveness translated into touch and feel and breath and warmth.

  Then they slept, facing each other, arms entwined

  Catherine woke. She did not jerk into awareness, nor was she startled from sleep-as she had so often been during the past weeks-by the intrusion of one of her children. No one stood by her bed waiting patiently for her to open her eyes. No one cried out in the darkness for her help or her love.

  She woke gradually. It was deep night; she could feel that by the stillness in the air, the darkness all around her, the almost oppressive silence of the house.

  She lay unmoving in her bed, waiting for sleep to resume, for whatever dream that had carried her away only moments before to return and reclaim her. She heard Willard breathing next to her, lightly, comfortably. She felt his warmth radiating from him and smoothing against her flesh.

  But she did not fall asleep. If anything, she grew more awake, more aware. She found herself tensing, listening for…something…

  Finally, she rolled out of bed, careful not to disturb Willard. She felt around at the foot of the bed and located her robe, pulled it on and cinched the belt around her waist. She stepped into her slippers.

  Without turning on any lights, feeling secure with her sense of feel as she trailed one hand along the wall, she moved down the hall to Suze’s room. There was enough light filtering through the window for her to see Suze fast asleep, one arm thrown around her favorite stuffed animal, a grey-striped cat that she had had for so long that it was now flattened and out-of-shape from being used as a pillow. Flat Cat, Catherine called it.

  She stepped out and moved on to the back bedroom.

  Again, the light from the window was sufficient for her to see, even though the shadows in this room were much darker, blacker than they had been in Suze’s room.

  She glanced to the left. Both boys were asleep on the bunks. Will, Jr., was bundled up, almo
st invisible in the layers of sheet and blanket that muffled him like a cocoon. Burt was, as always, nearly naked, his pajama bottoms pulled up to his thighs and his tops wrinkled just under his armpits. But his head was, also as always, snuggled into his pillow beneath a layer of blanket.

  She shrugged. It was a warm night. She wouldn’t bother tucking him in, since he would probably look just like this in the morning.

  Sams was curled up on the floor, halfway between the older boys’ bunks and his box bed. His blanket lay across his face.

  She stepped over to him and leaned down to pick him up.

  The scream of anguish and terror blasted through Willard’s dream, exploding him into the night. For an instant, he couldn’t breathe.

  Then the scream repeated, and he was on his feet and flying down the hall toward the back bedroom and Catherine’s hideous, gasping cries.

  He spun around the door jamb.

  Burt and Will, Jr., sat bolt upright in their beds, their faces screwed up in fright. Both seemed on the verge of shrieking but neither had yet found his voice.

  Catherine stood in the middle of the room, cradling Sams’ tightly in her arms.

  She turned to Willard. Her face was as white as death, and her voice shook so badly he could barely understand her. When he did, he felt the blood plummet from his face as well.

  “Sams is dead! He’s dead! My baby is dead!”

  From the Tamarind Valley Times, 5 November 1995:

  OFFICIAL END TO VALLEY MYSTERY

  The courts moved earlier today to declare Bryan Sydney, the Tamarind Valley real estate executive missing since October, 1989, legally dead. Members of Sidney’s immediate family gathered in the chambers of Judge Martha Feldmann to hear the official declaration which put an end to a seven-year investigation into his mysterious disappearance.

  With the ruling, legal claims levied against the now defunct Ace-High Construction and the equally defunct McCall/Sidney Realty will advance to a more abstract level as attorneys for sixteen families…