by Ed Kurtz
“Nothing broken?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Nora released herself from Alice’s steadying hold and shuffled forward a few steps. She appeared to be testing herself out, making sure everything was working the way it was supposed to work. Apparently satisfied, she turned back toward Alice and smiled weakly.
“Yeah, I think I’m okay. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Alice said. “Do you remember me? Alice…I come in for horror books sometimes?”
“Yes, of course,” Nora said, crinkling her nose. “Of course, sweetie.”
For a moment thereafter, the two of them stood in the middle of Highway 5, puffing intermittent clouds of steam from their mouths and not saying a word. Once or twice a bird cried somewhere in the middle distance, but apart from that the world was quiet and still. Finally, Alice spoke up.
“Suppose we should try to get your car out of that ditch?”
Nora nodded.
***
It was hard work, wet and cold and sweaty. Alice pushed from the ditch, the slush rising almost to the tops of her boots, while Nora pushed from the passenger side. They were eventually successful, steering the car back up onto the road. It even started up with no problems.
“Thank God!” Nora exclaimed upon hearing and feeling the roar of the engine coming to life.
Even Alice grinned. She stood nothing to gain from a vague acquaintance’s good fortune, but having been integral to the process made her feel warm and pleasant.
“The least I can do,” Nora said to her, “is offer you a ride.”
Alice stared off in the distance, down the road she’d planned to keep walking down until a reason to stop surfaced in her mind.
“Not really going anyplace,” she mumbled.
“Yeah? Me neither.”
They looked at one another’s faces. They both found sadness there.
Alice climbed into Nora’s car.
They chatted idly but amiably.
After a short while, Alice grew comfortable enough to slide her cold feet out of her boots and prop them up on the dash. She then extracted her composition book, opened it up to her last work-in-progress, and got to sketching while she and Nora chatted about the weather and the town and the futility of it all.
“Who’s that?” Nora asked, pointing at the developing portrait on the open page.
Alice flushed even pinker than before.
“Him? He’s…well, fuck it. He’s my English teacher.”
Nora chuckled.
“Oh? Well, I’ll be.”
“Mr. Blackmore. He’s kind of weird.”
“Handsome, though.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess? You’re the one drawing him. Pretty damn good, too.”
“Thanks.”
Nora fiddled with the heater, adjusting the knob to make it blast a little hotter. She didn’t recognize the comp book as any of the fancier variety she’d sold at In the Reads, and almost felt stung by it.
“What’s all that underneath?” she asked.
“What, this? Just a quote.”
“What’s it say? Can’t read it while I’m driving.”
“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears…for they are the rain upon the blinding dust of earth. It’s from Great Expectations.”
“You don’t say.”
“We read it in his class. Everybody hated it, and I mean everybody.”
“But not you.”
“Nope. Not me.”
“That’s cool. I like people who read. Not that I really still run a bookstore or anything…”
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, I still do, technically. It’s just, well…it’s more or less in limbo right now, I suppose.”
“That’s too bad,” Alice said, keeping her eyes on the page.
“Can’t say we see a lot of sales by way of Mr. Dickens, but…”
Nora suddenly gasped, her eyes wide and glossy.
“Holy fucking shit,” she said.
Alice jumped, looking at Nora and the road in front of them, trying to determine the cause of the woman’s glossed over glare.
“What is it?”
“Fucking Dickens!!”
Oh no, Alice thought. She’s nuts. I’ve gotten into a car with someone I hardly know and she’s a crazy loon. What the hell was I thinking?
Nora began to breathe more loudly, harshly. She then turned her bulging eyes on Alice, who slightly cringed at the wild expression.
“You mind if we run a little errand?” Nora asked expectantly.
“I…I…I guess not,” Alice weakly stammered.
***
Nora would never have guessed in a million years that Charles Dickens and a fourteen-year-old kid would give her the key to get to the bottom of this mess.
Yet there it was.
Martin Chuzzlewit, she repeated over and over again in her mind. Special friggin’ order.
I’ve got you, Walt.
50
The book was right where she’d left it, on the cluttered old oak desk in the back office. A sheet of paper, folded in half, was wrapped around it with a rubber band. Nora seized the paperback as soon as she burst through the office door and tore the band off. In a frenzy, she unfolded the paper so hurriedly it tore. Quickly, she read the receipt’s pertinent contents.
IN THE READS
7856 Front Street, Suite C
Order Form Summary
Dickens, Charles. Martin Chuzzlewit.
Penguin Classics.
For Blackmore, Walter
$6.99 + tax paid in full
She stuffed the receipt in her front pants pocket like it was a soiled tissue and stretched across the desk for the newest telephone directory.
“Walter Blackmore,” she requested and began flipping through the thin, yellow pages.
From the doorway, a puzzled Alice asked, “You know him?”
Nora paused in her frantic page-turning and turned to look at the confused girl. Alice’s hands were stuffed in her pockets and her head was cocked to one side. She raised her eyebrows.
“Mr. Blackmore,” Nora whispered.
51
Walt stood at the end of a long and narrow hallway. There were no windows and no doors. There were no lights, either, but somehow the hallway was dimly lit. Enough to see clear down to the other end, at any rate.
Walls, floor, and ceiling were constructed of freshly cut pine. Walt could smell it. It was like sticky sweet smelling needles on the forest floor in summertime. When he took a step forward, the beams comprising the floor creaked and groaned. Light spilled up from the cracks beneath and melted away when he stepped off the plank. He screwed up his face and shoved his lower lip out. He could not remember where he was or how he got there. Judging from the structure of the place, he would have been boarded up in there. There was no way out, so there could not have been any other way in.
It was not a hallway at all. It was a coffin.
Walt crept forward as the light began to die out, leaving the space shrouded in increasingly darkening shadows. Each time the wood creaked and buckled beneath his weight, the ceiling planks mirrored them. Clumps and clods of dirt rained down from above. Walt gasped. He was being buried.
He opened his mouth to scream, but it was instantly filled with earth. He could taste the loamy dirt, feel the worms and insects burrowing out of it and slithering down his throat. Walt clutched at his neck and shot his head forward, but the dirt only packed more deeply in.
The giant coffin shook. The light was almost completely gone now. From the darkness at the far end a figure emerged. It was Walt’s sister. It was Sarah. She looked incredibly sad, like something dreadful had happened.
She had no skin.
“WAAAAAAAAAAALT!” she shrieked.
Odd, Walt thought. She didn’t even open her mouth.
“WALT! WAAAAALT! HELP MEEEEEE!”
The light snuffed out. So did the air.
Wa
lt snapped awake gasping for air.
“WAAAAAALT!”
He blinked dumbly and sat upright, not entirely certain if he was still dreaming or not. When he heard Sarah squeal and cry he decided he was awake. It came from the attic, not his head. And Gwyn wasn’t in bed.
“Oh, hell.”
***
She wasn’t blacking out, but Sarah’s mind was in the process of switching off. It was instinctual; her psyche was simply protecting her from the horror that had come.
Like Walt, she too had been dreaming. In her fantasy, contrarily, Sarah maintained total control. She was free of her shackle and armed with the two sharpest and longest knives ever made. When she sliced into Walt and his beast, they came apart like overcooked meat. Wet slivers of them sloughed off with each swipe of the blades and slapped the gore-soaked floor below. Never before had Sarah entertained anything so gruesome, much less enjoyed it. She couldn’t even stomach the most innocuous horror film. But this was catharsis. This was her new and only dream.
The last image in her mind’s eye before she was startled awake was the monster’s terrified face. The first thing she saw after the dream faded away was its awful grin and leering, hungry eyes. That was the first time Sarah screamed.
Naked as always, it loomed over her on the mattress, smiling like a hyena and licking its lips. The last time Sarah had seen the thing, it was mostly covered in scabs. Now it was pink and veiny. Its breasts swung pendulously as it crawled over her, snapping at her with its teeth and clawing at her tattered clothes and skin. She cried out, alternately screaming her brother’s name and whimpering from the repulsive terror of it all.
It laughed and hissed before sticking out its dripping tongue and licking Sarah’s lips. She clamped them tightly together and tried to move her head away, but the creature dug its fingers into her hair and forced it back.
“Lovely,” it rasped. “Lovely girl.”
“Don’t,” Sarah murmured.
“Lovely and divine. Scrumptious.”
“Please.”
Its face plunged at her and the thing pressed its lips to hers in a hard kiss. It moaned with pleasure as it forced its tongue into her mouth. Sarah struggled but she couldn’t overpower the creature. Her eyes squirted tears, blurring her vision. The thing seized the front of her blouse and clawed at her chest, digging furrows in Sarah’s skin with its sharp fingernails. Sarah gasped in pain and screamed again.
“WAAAAALT!!”
She expected no assistance from the sociopath who locked her up in the first place, but it was Walt’s law that his pet demon leave her be. If there was any consistency in his madness, the fact that his nightmare creature was doing this would upset the bastard. Yet despite the immense racket the struggle created, there were no indications that he was coming to her rescue. In all likelihood, he’d abandoned her to this fate. Whatever was left of his humanity, the revolting monster on top of her had destroyed it.
Despair sank into her brain. No one was ever going to save her. Sarah was completely on her own. She let out a wet sob.
This thing, this fucking thing…if it kills me, I’m taking this goddamned fucking thing with me.
And then she thrust her hands up and clutched the creature’s head. Fine, tiny hairs had sprouted from its scalp, almost too blonde to see in the dark attic. Sarah pressed hard on the temples and the thing grunted. She pressed harder yet and it shrieked. It relinquished its hold on her and seized her wrists. Sarah shot up and drove a knee into its stomach. It groaned angrily and bore its teeth.
“Get off!” Sarah growled. She kneed it again and then jammed the crown of her head into its throat. The humanoid thing wheezed and rolled off of Sarah and off the mattress. It gurgled and gasped.
Sarah scurried away from it, off the soiled mattress and up to her feet. The steel line that secured her to the post went taut. There was only so far she could go.
The creature was already recovering.
It was now on its hands and knees, spitting blood on the insulation. It snapped its face toward Sarah and snarled. Its teeth were stained red. Its eyes gleamed with rage.
Sarah trembled.
The monster sprang at her, screaming and opening its maw wide.
***
Alice switched the radio on, but it was nothing but static, probably as much the wreck’s fault as the twisted fender in front. Nora immediately reached over and turned it back off again.
“I need to explain,” she told the sullen girl.
“I just want to listen to some music,” Alice griped. “And you should take me back home now, too.”
“I will, I’ll do that. But this is an emergency. Really. My best friend is missing, maybe dead. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure out who this weird sack of shit is for months, and I swear God himself must have sent you my way because now I’ve got him. I’ve finally got him!”
Nora’s babbling did little to assuage Alice’s apprehension of her. The more she tried to explain herself, the crazier she sounded. Alice just wanted to get away from her, almost enough to jump out of the car while it was still moving. Maybe at the next stop sign or red light…
“Look, this is my last chance. My last lead. I’ve tried everything else and everybody else. Maybe this Blackmore guy is as innocent as the driven snow, but there’s a chance he’s not. I’ve got to find out, Alice.”
“He’s just a nerd!” Alice protested. “I mean, he’s a high school English teacher! How many guys you ever met get their jollies off friggin’ Shakespeare, and then go home and kidnap or kill some chick?”
“I might be about to meet one.”
“I don’t think so, lady. Not Mr. Blackmore. He’s hardly going to snatch somebody everyone would miss and…” Alice trailed off with an audible pop of her lips. Nora took notice of the young girl’s unsettled expression from the corner of her eye. Something was amiss.
The boys. The troublemakers. The supposed skippers, Jarod and Clem. Jarod went to see him, after school. At his house. He never came back…
Alice shook her head. This was bullshit. Mr. Blackmore didn’t kill the nasty little fucker, he just ran off someplace to smoke grass with his chucklehead buddy rather than come to school on Thursday. Hell, they did that all the time. There was absolutely nothing to it worth giving a second thought. No matter how strange it was for a teacher to insist one of his students come to his home at night.
“Alice? What is it?”
“What’s what? It’s nothing. This is crazy, Nora.”
“What’s crazy is a close friend’s boyfriend you’ve never laid eyes on. What’s up with this guy? What’s he hiding?”
“Nothing!” Alice shouted. “He’s not hiding anything! You’re paranoid!”
Nora winced at the outburst. Adolescent girls were prone to them, she guessed—she remembered her own unstable teenage years all too well—but Alice’s blind, too amorous defense of the man seemed peculiar.
“Alice,” Nora began gently, “how much do you really know about the guy? He’s got his teacher hat on at school, but he’s not like that all the time. Not at home, or when he’s just out with friends. Teachers are people, too. And sometimes people are really, terribly messed up.”
Alice scowled.
“I’m the one between us who actually knows him,” she said in a low voice. “Let’s not forget that.”
Nora sighed. The kid was getting to her. Nora didn’t remember ever having had a crush on a teacher herself at that age—they were all women or trolls to her memory—but even so, she found it difficult to comprehend the bizarre lengths to which this girl was willing to go in a grown man’s defense. It begged the question: what had Walt Blackmore done to her? With her? Was he a pedophile on top of a kidnapper and murderer?
But no, she did not know that for a fact. Any of it. That was why she was driving somewhat recklessly toward a complete stranger’s far-flung country house.
“I guess we’ll just have to find out,” Nora responded at length.
“We?” Alice blurted. “What do you mean, we? You’re taking me home, right?”
“I hate to break this to you, kid, but I’m going to need you for this.”
Alice blanched.
“Fuck that!” she cried. “I’m not helping you get all up in Mr. Blackmore’s face about this whacked out crap! He’s—he’s my friend.”
“He’s your teacher.”
“He’s not like other teachers,” Alice pouted. “He…sees me.”
Nora pursed her lips but refrained from saying anything. Kids were so predictable; it was no wonder they tended to be such easy targets for predators. Predators like Walt Blackmore.
After a stretch of strained silence, Nora said, “Look—maybe I am wrong about this. Hell, I haven’t got a shred of evidence against the guy. Otherwise I’d just let the cops deal with it, wouldn’t I? All I want to do is talk to him, ask him a couple of questions. If nothing’s fishy, fine. If something seems off, we book it and I will call the police. Either way, I’m not planning on getting all up in his face or making any kind of scene. I just think it’ll help smooth things out if you’re there with me. A common acquaintance, you know?”
“What if she’s there?” Alice asked nonchalantly.
“Who?”
“Your friend. Mr. Blackmore’s girlfriend.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Alice sniffed. “He probably just dumped her ass,” she said.
Nora surreptitiously rolled her eyes. She drove on, ignoring the speed limit entirely, and neither she nor Alice said another word until Walt’s house came into view.
52
Sarah crab-walked to the support beam, leaving as much slack on the cable as possible. Gwyn launched herself into the air like a panther, her fingers curled like claws, her mouth open and snarling. Gathering the cable in her hands, Sarah held it up and drove it into Gwyn’s neck when she fell upon her. The cable smashed against Gwyn’s throat. The momentum made the impact hard; her neck burned red in a deep furrow all the way across. Gwyn coughed and dropped to her side.
“Kuuuuh,” Gwyn moaned.
“Yeah, whatever,” Sarah growled as she scrambled to her feet, in agonizing pain but energized with a surge of adrenaline, and delivered a solid kick to the monster’s ribs. Gwyn grunted and flashed a furious gaze at Sarah.
