Kacey stood on a lawn—at night. She crossed her arms before her, shivering. Blinking, she found herself on a street before a residence at the Safe Harbor retirement community. From all around her screams, shouts, and the sounds of intense struggles issued from every home. Shadows stalked the streets and grounds.
Kacey now stood before one of those residences... its front door wide open. An inside light was on and she heard shouts from the angry man inside. It sounded like he was still dragging around that claw-footed tub.
Kacey looked back from where she came, saw the kitchen
And was suddenly there. Back inside the house.
As if never having left, she opened the refrigerator, also covered in “MONSTER” graffiti, and rummaged about inside. No more yelling issued from the living room, only muffled pleas and disgusting sounds of ripping and tearing...
Kacey removed a carton of milk from the refrigerator. “MOTHER” was boldly printed on all four sides of the carton. Kacey took a swig. Milk overflowed out her mouth and ran down her face and chest onto the floor, pooling at her feet. There was far more milk than container.
Sheila entered the kitchen, bloody, her hair and clothes disheveled.
“Honey—what’s the matter?” she asked, smoothing out her hair and clothes, “You’ve simply not been yourself, these days.”
Kacey removed the carton from her mouth, but the milk continued to flow unabated onto the floor.
“This whole dream is seriously fucked!” Kacey said.
Back outside on that nocturnal lawn, the Kacey there shook her head in confusion.
How can I be in two dreams at once?
Back inside the kitchen, the Kacey there stared at Sheila. Sheila extended a bloodied hand out to Kacey’s chest. Blood from Sheila’s hand, and the spilled milk on Kacey’s chest, mixed.
“I know what’ll cheer you up. Let’s go upstairs,” Sheila said, running her bloody hand down Kacey’s front.
The invisible laugh track erupted in surprise.
Kacey pushed Sheila away. Looked to her bloodied hand and appearance.
Back outside, shouting and cursing, Angry Man crashed through that other house and out the doorway, dragging his claw-footed tub with him. Splinters and wood chunks exploded from the smashed doorway as he forced the tub through the opening.
Angry Man dragged the tub across the lawn, gouging out deep channels. He stopped directly in front of Kacey. She again blinked. When she opened her eyes all kinds of wood and other consumables were now packed beneath the tub.
“I’ll show you!” Angry Man shouted at the top of his lungs, “I’ll FUCKING SHOW YOU!”
Kacey took a step back.
Angry Man now had a roaring fire raging beneath the tub, the tub’s water boiling. The heat was stifling. Kacey looked back to the residence’s open door. Two body-sized bundles were tied up there in front of the door. Angry Man continued ranting and raving.
One of the bundles jerked back and forth like a Mexican Jumping Bean. Angry Man saw that and charged the door, yanking the old man wrapped inside the writhing bundle to his feet. Grunting and growling he viciously slapped him around.
“I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT IT’S LIKE!” Angry Man shouted, “I’LL GODDAMN SHOW YOU BOTH!”
Angry Man savagely punched the old man in the head until all struggle ceased. Angry Man stuffed the old man under his arm like a newspaper, then also grabbed the man’s wife by her hair and charged the tub, spitting froth.
“I’LL FUCKING SHOW YOU, YOU FUCKING BABY KILLERS! I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT IT’S LIKE, ALL RIGHT!”
Once at the tub and without missing a beat, the Angry Man chucked the old man into the boiling tub feet first. The man awakened, screaming and struggling to get out of the water, but Angry Man forced him back under with a bare hand, still clenching his wife by her hair. Rabidly frothing at the mouth, Angry Man’s head swelled grotesquely, his veins popping out the sides of his head and neck in thick ropes.
In tears, horrified, but still unable to move, all Kacey could do was watch... the old woman, who was in severe pain and sobbing, her scalp hideously torn and bloody, was trying to find her husband, who had finally gone silent among the roiling water.
Back in the kitchen Kacey backed away from a now naked and bloodied Sheila, who offhandedly tossed her knife over her shoulder. It stuck into a wall, in the middle of one of those still dripping “Monster” words that continued to grow and crawl across the walls, floor, and ceiling.
Sheila was in mid conversation when Kacey had focused back in on their kitchen scene.
“... nuthin... or we could just do it right here, while everyone else is in the next room....”
“None of this is right,” Kacey said, “this whole thing is wrong....”
Back outside, on that Safe Harbor residence’s lawn, a sickened Kacey went to the old lady who lay on the lawn, but Angry Man wasn’t having any of that and quickly shot between them, grabbing the old lady.
“No!” Kacey shouted, straining against incapable action.
“You fucking bitch!” Angry Man shouted to the old lady, “You want him? Go—go to your fucking commander!”
Angry Man hefted the wiggling and struggling woman above his head and heaved her at the tub. Her head hit the edge of it, snapping her neck, and she tumbled lifelessly into the boiling water.
“No!” Angry Man wailed.
The old woman bobbed about, unmoving in the boiling water with her husband.
Angry Man’s shoulders slumped. “That won’t happen again,” he said, sighing.
He stared at the tub a moment longer, before turning and purposely striding across the lawn and street into another home. Kacey turned away—and bolted.
Back inside the house, the Kacey there also ran from the kitchen, back into the living room. Fisher was holding a writhing and bound-and-gagged Jack on the floor, while Hedda was busily fishing out Jack’s intestines from his slit-open stomach. Hedda turned to Kacey and grinned.
“Oh, my God...,” Kacey said.
Naked, one hand behind her back, Sheila came up behind Kacey. Sheila’s entire body was smeared in blood and milk.
“Oh, come on, honey... get with the program! We all just wanna help!”
The laugh track erupted.
Kacey again turned to run, but Sheila brought her hand out from behind her back revealing the large-bladed knife that morphed into an exaggerated KA-BAR. She took a stab at Kacey, but Kacey knocked the knife from her grip. Kacey again tried to flee, but now Fisher and Jack are there, Jack with his intestines dangling out his belly. Jack and Fisher pinned Kacey, as Sheila calmly picked up her knife and handed it (handle first) to Hedda. Sheila came up to Kacey and planted a big wet one on her, seductively grinding her body into Kacey’s. She then backed away, gaze demurely lowered. Hedda came up to Kacey, brandishing the KA-BAR.
“I’m sorry, dear,” Hedda said, “but it’s for your own good, you deserting little bitch.”
Hedda rammed the blade deep into Kacey’s abdomen while maintaining eye contact, and, using all her body weight, yanked it brutally across her belly. She looked to Fisher.
“This how it’s done?”
“Sure... if you wanna take all the fun out of it,” Fisher said.
The ghostly laugh track went off.
“No-no-no-no....” Kacey said, life ebbing from her.
Pleading and in tears, everything began to gray—then black—out, Kacey felt her body jerk and jerk and...
The last thing Kacey heard were the two of them calmly and rationally discussing the proper way to gut a person, like so much venison...
3
Kacey bolted upright, sweating. Her heart pounded and her hands clutched the blankets to the point of cramping as she tried to control a severe coughing fit. Leaning across the bed, she grabbed a small plastic cup filled with water and took a sip. Slowly regaining her composure, she laid back down, staring into the ceiling. Glanced to the clock. One-thirty-two a.m.
The same, basic,
dream she’d been having for the past year, yet now there was a different, horrifying new episode, with a new cast of characters.
And where had all the anger and violence come from?
Never had the dream been so violent, so angry... and now Fisher and Jack and Hedda had been added, and in such nasty, terrible ways...
And Sheila.
A blast from the past.
If she never met her again, it’d be too soon. She was sure she was a nice person, but was eternally embarrassed at her behavior in such an exquisite moment of weakness—and the fact that Sheila had actually taken advantage of her... that got her even more. The emotions, the stress... the booze. She hadn’t known what she was doing... what she wanted, and was eternally thankful that they hadn’t gone any further. She was sure she’d never have been able to again look herself in the mirror if they hadn’t stopped...
But she had been taken advantage of, that was what really haunted her... Sheila, as sensitive as she may have behaved, had still taken advantage of her.
But you put yourself there, her little voice cried.
I may have, but I was messed up. She wasn’t—or at least, didn’t appear to be.
Are you writing her script, now? How do you know what was or wasn’t going on in her head?
I don’t.
All right, then. Maybe she’s not as evil as you’re making her out to be, ever think of that?
No.
Maybe you’re also not the lesbian you’re making yourself out to be...
Kacey cast a look to the ring she’d found, there beside her wedding band on the nightstand. She rolled over, away from the light of the nightstand clock, pulling her blankets up over her.
She’d run away from her husband, her child, her life, had full-on made out with a woman—and was now living alive and not-so-well in sunny south Florida, working as a stringer for a local rag, covering a heinous mass murder.
Strangled. Suffocated.
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
Could life get any better?
4
Dr. Kimberly Preston sat at the table across from Margrit Malotki in the Punta Gorda, Florida, interrogation room, quietly tapping a pencil against her notepad. Miss Malotki sat handcuffed to a bar set into the concrete floor. Her hands were folded before her in her lap. She stared down at the table, tears in her eyes; sniffling.
“Miss Malotki... you’re telling me that you’ve been having these images all your life? Then what made you all of a sudden walk into homes and start killing?”
Dr. Preston intently focused on every move of the woman before her.
Margrit looked up and replied in her thick German accent.
“I do not know. Maybe... maybe, I think, they got more violent... more intense. It’s hard to talk about, umm... describe. The most recent Träume... um-um dreams... had a tiger in them. Stalking streets... city streets. It would end up at that... Platz... the, um, place—Harbor?”
“The Safe Harbor Retirement Community.”
“Ja... that place. But... but....”
Dr. Preston put down her pencil and folded her hands before her on the table. She waited, but Miss Malotki was not forthcoming.
“But what, Miss Malotki? What are you trying to say?”
Margrit squirmed in her chair, grimacing. “Ich weiß nicht....”
“In English, please.”
“I don’t know how to say this! It’s very confusing!”
Dr. Preston softened her tone. “Just try to express what you’re feeling. Is there an image you’d like to draw, perhaps?”
Margrit Malotki continued to squirm.
“Ich habe Kopfschmerzen... in my head... it’s all in my head!” she said, bringing up cuffed hands as far as she could. “It’s like... like... I’m not really here....”
Preston straightened up, raising an eyebrow.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s like I’m not actually here. There are times... many times... none of this feels real. I feel... feel like I’m in a dream... all of this... like I don’t belong here.”
Dr. Preston looked up from her note taking. “Well, then, where do you feel you belong?”
“I don’t know... just... not... here. Not in this... time.”
Chapter Thirteen
Banner wove his way through the hallways at the Sunset Harbor Gazette newsroom, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. As much as he tried to will his hands from shaking, he wasn’t very successful. The last time he’d been so driven to the shakes was way back in the early days—in the jungle. Banner passed a men’s room, paused, then decided to duck inside. The restroom empty, he entered the far handicapped stall, braced himself against a stall wall with his free hand, and closed his eyes. He again tried to will himself to stop shaking like a damned leaf, but the screams, the horses, the horrific battle imagery were all still there... in every corner of his mind...
He was getting too old for all this.
And there had been something about sitting atop a box? A tall, large box... after a battle?
He’d just started seeing that image after his Tamiami Trail incident. The four horsemen. He tried substituting images from his own life in an effort to drown out the other ones, but that didn’t work. He tried mentally erasing them, as a psychologist had once instructed, to acknowledge the images for what they were, then allow them to fade away into the darkness on their own accord, and this, with some concentration, kinda worked. It got his hands to stop shaking, though an occasional tremor did, spasmodically, resurface. Focusing on his hands instead of the images themselves, he was finally able to command them silent.
Incontinence was for the old and infirm.
Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, Banner left the men’s room and continued on to Kacey Miller. As practical a man as he was, he was certain his experience—and what Miss Miller might know or had experienced herself—might somehow be tied together. He was a stone’s throw from her desk when he saw her hastily cover something up before turning around.
“Morning,” Banner said, taking another sip from his coffee.
“Morning,” Kacey replied, turning away from her desk, clearly surprised by his presence. “To what do I owe this audience?”
Banner removed the same chair as last time from a nearby desk and again sat beside her. As he sat, his knees buckled for an instant. He hoped she hadn’t seen that.
“Um—Mr. Banner is it?—what can I do for you?” Kacey asked, returning to her desk. “I’ve had kind of a rough night last night,” she said, uselessly rearranging items on her desk.
“Maybe we both did,” Banner said, eyeing her. “How’s that story of yours coming along?”
“Fine. Look, I don’t mind helping you... but, as you can see, I’m kinda busy... deadlines—”
“We’re all busy, ma’am. I’m won’t take up much of your time. I have a quick question, then I’m outta here.”
Damn the body—he could still feel the tremors niggling, taunting. He again tried to mentally shunt their imagery, tried to focus only on the woman before him. His voice had actually wavered a touch—not much, just a little—but enough, this time, he was certain even Miss Miller might have noticed. She stopped her needless rearrangement.
“Are you all right?” Kacey asked, suddenly looking at him, really looking at him. “What’s the matter?”
Banner reached across her and set down his coffee directly in front of her. His hand, muscular and crisscrossed with veins and scars, trembled.
She looked up from his hands... to his eyes.
What had his eyes seen over his lifetime?
“See that?”
Kacey actually blinked, coming back to the present.
“Too much coffee?”
“I saw something last night. I’m not easily shaken.”
Kacey studied him; his hands.
“Miss Miller... you don’t know me, but the first and last time I was ever so shaken was my first night firefight in a VC jungle. I’ve seen
all kinds of horror, but what I saw last night I’ve never seen before.”
Kacey paused, quietly reaching for the pocket where she’d hidden her new
You are ours now...
ring. It was still there.
“What’d you see?”
Banner grabbed his coffee and sat back. Checked to see no one was within earshot.
“I saw,” he said, clearing his throat, “Ghosts. Four of them.”
“Ghosts?”
“Alongside Tamiami Trail. There was plenty of traffic, but, apparently, only I saw anything.”
“How do you know this?”
“It was right on the boulevard, Miss Miller. Cars kept driving past, yet no one stopped or looked my way. Nothing.”
“Mind if I take notes?”
Banner shook his head, inhaled deeply, and took another sip of coffee. Set it down before continuing.
“I don’t know how else to explain this, but I saw—in my head—images... visions, while I was there, standing before these... ghosts. Warriors of some kind.”
“How did you know this?”
“There were four of them, all on horseback. Dressed up in some kind of armor I couldn’t make out, carrying pikes. They never said a word, never moved—except for their horses, which seemed very impatient, snorting and stomping—but as I stood before them, I had these... visions... of horses and battle and death... and had the most terrifying feeling they were coming for me. All of us. I know this sounds stupid, but it’s what I experienced... felt. I felt like... I was actually there, wherever ‘there’ was. Wherever those battles were. It was hard to focus... to breathe... do anything, so I—and you have to understand this isn’t easy for me to admit—I fled.”
Kacey stared at Banner.
(deserter!)
(loser!)
(lesbian!)
Kacey nodded pensively, intently focused on Banner. “W-where’d this happen?”
“In front of the retirement home. Between midnight and twelve-fifteen.”
The Uninvited Page 17
