Behind the Black Door (Supergirls Book 1)

by Mav Skye

  I sense the prey near by. He smells of pig and sweat. My claws are sharp, my teeth stained with blood… and ready for more.

  I stalk slowly. Halfway down, I notice a gravely glow too red for a fireplace. It reminds me of hell, what it would look like.

  Hell.

  “Hell is behind a black door.”

  How had my own mother known all those years ago? Hell is behind a black door. And for a moment, I wonder if she didn’t run away from May and me. I wonder if she found the black door, this black door, and Fat Bastard’s hell behind it.

  That’s impossible.

  I hear a whistling sing down from the kitchen. Is it? The whistling asks.

  I shake the whistling off and grit my teeth as my sneakers touch cement floor. My eyes adjust, and I wonder if there will be marble sisters down here too. I wonder if there are caskets of dead women. Maybe there are hairy boogey men hidden in the walls, waiting to jump out, like in those horror flicks.

  But I don’t see any of that.

  In the dim, wine glow I see cement slabs in the shape of walls. They lie on their sides like dominoes. They are lower than six feet, a two foot gap between the tops and the ceiling. I am too short to see over them. The slabs of cement lap over one another, like a maze. In front of all this are ropes, six in all, hanging from the ceiling, knotted in nooses.

  Uh… creepy.

  But so far, there is nothing else that would suggest the torture porn of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. No spikes or iron maidens, or rolled up towels of torture devices. Fat Bastard had acted on his own imagination. There is no cliché to his world.

  I shiver and rub my arms, aware again, of my bare skin. I reach back and check my tied straps. My cleavage, at this very moment, is amazing—Supergirl amazing.

  Once more, I clutch the unicorn dagger with both hands. I hear a soft whisper to my left and am startled at what I find. The edge of the basement is bricked in. The bricks slip behind the cement walls leaving a small passage. Shadow boxes fit inside the bricks, but I can’t make out the shapes within them.

  Again, I hear a whisper from the brick wall. Not the whisper of a sick pig, but of something else—someone else. It is familiar.

  I take a step toward the bricks, and my foot nudges a trunk sitting at the base of the staircase. The wooden lid is open, and in the bleak light, I see something stringy inside it. I think of dolls, and squat down next to the trunk, wishing I had a flashlight.

  I sniff and gag. It smells of ancient cheap perfume (like the fifteen bottles May keeps under the sink) and unwashed sweat pants.

  Reaching in, I feel a shaggy softness. I grasp it and pull it up. Long strands of hair, dark and light, cling to shriveled clumps of… something.

  Scalps.

  I drop them and stifle a scream. I bite down on my wrist, and gag. I hear May’s voice in my mind, ‘Show us what you got, sick fucker!’

  No thanks.

  I stand and walk toward the brick wall with shadow boxes. The light doesn’t quite touch this far. As I near, I look down the passage. It’s pitch black. I hold the dagger to it. “Come out, piggy.”

  A gentle voice beckons to me from the brick. It’s so familiar.

  I can’t help but turn back to the shadow boxes. One shape in particular comes into focus. My heart pounds. I can’t breathe. All I can do is stare. I am eye level with the dark shape inside the box. My feet move and I draw closer and closer until I am face to face with it, with her.

  The plaster is like oily tar, round and ovoid. The plastic melds perfectly with every groove: eyes, cheekbones, nose, the mouth open wide. It indents every tooth. A woman’s face locked in a perfect scream.

  My stomach is pins and needles. It isn’t just any woman’s face. I lift my fingers to touch her, on the left cheek is a scar in the shape of a kiss. “Mother?”

  A soft moan.

  I jump back, locked on her eyes. A wetness fills my sexy getaway jeans. I drop the unicorn dagger and run to the staircase. I leap up a stair or two.

  I’m about to cry out for May, when I see her pacing in front of the black door, talking to herself. “It whistles. It’s all my fault.”

  I can’t tell her.

  I sit down on the bottom step and clutch the side of my face and rock. Fuck, fuck, fuck…

  And that’s when I hear it: a slow creaking of rope coming from where the red light is. I think of the pull string in Fat Bastard’s horror closet, the way it tick tocked back and forth. The creaking rope beats in perfect time with it.

  I hear May’s voice in the back of my mind, “Maybe we should just leave.”

  She was right. We should have left. I look upstairs at her pacing. But this time it is too late. The moment to leave is already long behind.

  “Just like mother,” says May.

  “No, not like mother.”

  I walk back to where the unicorn dagger lies on the floor. I glance at mother. Her lips adjust and move, “Thee shall smite the devil!” And then, that screaming mouth smiles at me.

  I smile back.

  I bend down and pick up the unicorn dagger, feeling strong again with it in my hands.

  I leave mother, and turn towards the labyrinth of walls, find an opening and slip in.

  12

  Supergirls For Reals

  I put both hands on the unicorn dagger; ready to stab at anything that moves. I creep along wall after wall, hugging shadows, turning corners, tiptoeing through eternal darkness. I’m getting close to the red light.

  A low voice rattles by the source of the red glow. Fat Bastard. I try to make out what he says, but I can’t. I imagine he’s talking to one of his victims.

  I steel myself for what comes next, picturing what I’ll do when I see him. I’ll go for his throat or perhaps stab him straight through the heart, as he deserves.

  Just get the job done, says May.

  Which reminds me, I need to keep an eye out for the safe. I glance around again, keeping aware of where I am.

  I slip between two walls. A bare bulb, lava red, swings from a low ceiling. The floor slopes down, the walls sinking with it. I enter another, deeper layer of Fat Bastard’s dungeon. I keep my eye on the lava light as I move, closer, closer. I see the top of a head bob above the wall, then duck away.

  “Gotcha,” I mouth. I reach the edge of the wall, and poke my head around the corner. My eyes pop at what I see. I’m so startled I almost drop the dagger.

  Fat Bastard is hanging by a rope from the ceiling. He turns in slow pirouettes over an incinerator. The apple is still crammed in his mouth, a red drizzle leaks around it and drips down his hairy, fat chest. A kitchen knife, May’s knife, sticks out of his gut.

  May stabbed him, but someone else must have finished him off.

  I take a few steps closer, examining his face. His eyes pop open. They are upturned and pasty yellow.

  I blink, trying to comprehend. A whistling fills my ears--

  Fat Bastard screams!

  Blood worms squirt from his eyes. He spits out the apple, along with teeth. He smiles a huge, nasty, toothless smile. “Eat the bitch!”

  “God!” I fall to my knees, and grab my head. I want to beg him to make the whistling stop.

  I want to beg him to make the whistling stop, to take it all away. And suddenly, I am marble, a sister of pain begging before our creator, our tormentor.

  I am helpless.

  The unicorn dagger neighs within my hand.

  Just as suddenly as the screaming started, it stops.

  All is silent. Lifting my head, I still see Fat Bastard, apple in his mouth, twisting on his rope, just as before.

  I hear whistling again. It’s eerie and high pitched. I glance around me, above, trying to identify where it’s coming from. Until another noise trips me back.

  A loud grunt. A cuss word.

  I follow the voice, knowing whomever it belongs to is waiting where the red light shines, behind the wall directly across from the incinerator.

  Bile forces its way up
my throat as I inch carefully, so carefully, down the short wall space, and peek around the corner.

  A man in black has his ass to me, his head in a safe. He’s shoveling money into a large duffle bag, grumbling as he goes. “Spent half my life rollin’ with this fucked up nursery rhyme. No more fetchin’ shortys like some wack dog for you, Mr. Bell. It’s a trip you got pinched by one of your own ho’s. Righteous, that’s what that is.”

  A million thoughts flood my mind at once. Leroy? When did he get here? How long has he been here? How did he have the safe key? I have the key. That money is ours! We fought for it. We deserve it. It is ours! Ours!

  I sneak down the path leading to Leroy’s unprotected back. I grip the unicorn dagger between both hands and raise it.

  Leroy sticks his head back in the safe and grabs another handful. “I’m takin’ all your Benjamin’s. Gonna need ‘em for therapy to put my head back right after all you done, you sick ass fuck.” He pops out of the safe, and runs his fingers over the bills.

  A guttural sound escapes my lips and I lunge.

  “Ahh!” He sees me out of the corner of his eye. “What the--“

  He dodges as I stab at his lungs. I adjust my attack and slice open the sleeve of his shirt. Blood spills, but not enough. Fuck, he’s fast.

  Leroy twists, grabs the dagger out of my hand, and pops me in the face twice with the bottom of the handle. I fall to the ground, seeing stars. My burst lip is gushing and my left eye waters and swells. I reach towards him. “It’s mine. That money is mine!” I rise to my hands and knees.

  Leroy is panting, pointing the dagger at me, and eyeing something to my right.

  The duffle bag.

  I snatch it up, and hold the blue canvas to me. I can smell the cash. It smells of cow shit and flowers and blood and sin. It smells of freedom.

  Leroy is weaving in and out of focus. The pull light swings and goblins peek over walls. I say, “I have the key. You can’t have the money because I have the key.”

  “Yeah, whatever, bitch.” He thrusts the dagger at me. I see three of them and try to block—I block the wrong one. A sharp pain plunges into my left shoulder. I can’t move, breathe. I see his big hand reach toward me. I clutch at the bag as he rips it out of my hands. My left arm juts out with the bag, still clinging to it. I scream at the pain, aiming all the energy of it at him. My right hand searches for the key in my pocket and when Leroy leans in, I stab at the blur of his face.

  He shrieks, “My eye, wacked bitch!” He lets the duffle bag go and it’s mine. For one second, the money is all mine. I’m going to buy a little house for May and me, out where the air is fresh. And we’ll put pots of flowers on our porch and sit in rockers, watching fantailed doves glide across a sunset sky, waiting for night, when ice cream falls from the clouds.

  Leroy knocks a fist to my jaw, and I fly back to the cement, the dagger screwing deeper into my shoulder. My left side is numb. I moan, and when he tears the duffle bag from me I can’t resist.

  Leroy stands over me, holding the bag to his chest, and shakes his head. When he does this, blood drips from his gored eye. “You should’a left while you had the chance.”

  “Where’d you get the key…” I mumble at him.

  He starts down the side of the wall, feeling his way, and slips through. I gather all the rage and pain inside me and scream, “Where did you get that key!”

  Leroy’s head pops back through the gap. He smiles a wicked grin. Crimson tears splash into his open mouth, the mouth that says, “I made a copy.”

  And then he is gone.

  I punch my right fist into the ground, and cry out. Carefully, I gather my legs under me. I cradle my left arm to my stomach, grip a pike on the wall, and pull myself up until I’m standing. Every movement trembles pain from my shoulder.

  There’s a loud Smack! As if Leroy ran into a wall. The following-- “Shit!” confirms it.

  I follow after him.

  “May,” I scream. “May! He has the money.”

  I limp up the ramp and around the labyrinth of walls as fast as I can. I scream at May again. Finally, I burst between the last two walls.

  Leroy is halfway up the stairs.

  “May, our money!” I trip over the trunk of hair and plunge face first to the floor. The trunk tips, dumping scalps over me. A scream fills my lungs. I can’t move from the floor. I turn my head in the direction of the stairs and belt, “May!”

  “Jenn?” May rushes into the doorway just as Leroy breaches the top of stairs. They smack together and sway with the impact, doing a fancy foot dance on the stairs. Leroy grips her in a lover’s embrace.

  There’s a loud BANG!

  “May!” I shriek again. But, instead of pulling back towards the kitchen, May pushes forward. Her blonde hair flies up like a cape.

  “Oh no, May!” I say.

  They both tumble down. It seems like an eternity as their bodies flounder and pound the stairs together like rag dolls, bouncing and thudding from step to step.

  The duffle bag, unzipped, bounces along with them, raining money everywhere.

  Finally, their bodies hit bottom, skulls smacking the cellar floor with a loud crack.

  “May?”

  I scramble to the base of the stairs and over Leroy’s body. His neck is cocked at an odd angle. His gouged eye is open and staring right stares at me in the dim red light. His Giorgio Armani shirt sports a brand new bullet hole.

  A whisper: Dead, dead, dead.

  “May?” A familiar whistling responds back to me. I ignore it.

  “Oh, May,” I cry, when I see her. She lays to Leroy’s right. Her arms dislocated. Blood flows out of her mouth, blotting out Godzilla. She doesn’t move.

  “May?” I bend over her, slicking back dirty blonde (now bloody blonde) hair from her face.

  She doesn’t open her eyes, but her chest moves in heavy waves. She whispers, “We got the money, twisted sister?”

  “Oh, yes.” I try to wipe the blood off her chin, but it only smears. “Jackpot.”

  Bills still rain down softly around us. I think of what she said earlier, only hours ago. Maybe we should just leave. She knew better. May had been content with nothing and at peace with her illness. It was I who insisted: Tonight everything is going to change.

  I am stupid, so stupid.

  May’s mouth lifts, forming a smile. Her closed eyes wrinkle at the corners-- my May. “Take me somewhere nice.”

  “I will. That little house in the country with baskets of flowers on the porch.” I keep petting her hair. “And we’ll be happy, May, I promise. I’ll take good care of you.”

  There is a pause, a silence, and suddenly, I lift my head and look across the basement to the brick wall with the shadow boxes. I had to tell her. “Mom didn’t run away, May.”

  “I know,” she whispers back.

  “How—“

  With labored breaths she says, “I saw her picture on his wall.”

  I bend my head and sob into her hair. “I’m sorry, May. So sorry.”

  “Supergirls…” she says and stops.

  I lean over Godzilla, who would roar no more, and cry. “Say it, May. Say it.”

  “Stand together.”

  “Supergirls stay together,” I say quickly and hug her skinny bones.

  “Gasoline under the sink,” she says. Her breathing struggles, more blood gurgles out. I can’t feel a pulse. I lean my face over hers, touching my lips against her cheek. May says three more words, clear as day. “Roast the pig.”

  And then it’s over.

  I cry over her for hours. I hear things. Sometimes, it’s whistling. Sometimes, Fat Bastard comes back to life and is wiggling like a piggly maggot on his rope. He smiles and says, “Eat the bitch!” Leroy, with his one gouged eye open, yells, “You’s bitches are crazy. Crazy!” The young woman at the top of the stairs weeps for the dream of the stars.

  I reach back with my right arm, manipulate the unicorn dagger out of my shoulder, shrieking as I do. I fling it
over the domino walls. Far off, it clinks to the floor.

  I hear one more voice. It is feminine and small, my mother’s voice. “Smite thee devil, child.”

  It’s then I realize I have to go. I have to leave. I stand and stuff bills into the pockets of my blood stained not so sexy getaway jeans. “I love you, May.” I bend and kiss my sister’s forehead and as I do I hear the distinct whistling again. It’s coming from upstairs.

  I start towards the steps, then pause and turn back. I limp over to the shadow boxes and lift my hand, touching my mother’s black plastered face. “I hid it, mom, under the carpet in the closet.” My finger lingers over her kiss shaped scar. I said the words I never got to say the day she left. The day Fat Bastard took her behind the black door. “Laters.”

  A feeling pops inside me, a release. Down here, May and mom and me, we’d been a family one last time.

  I stand and sprint up the steps, through the black door, and into the kitchen. I look under the sink. In the back, behind the drainpipe, trash bags and dishwasher detergent is a gallon of gasoline. I snatch it out. How did May know?

  “Because I told her,” said a voice from the living room.

  I scream in frustration. I pick up the gas with my left arm, and march into the living room.

  “Shut up!” I scream at the moose head with the blank, empty eyes and ten point antlers. “I know you’re dead. You can’t talk or whistle. So shut the fuck up!”

  “Poor, poor wonder woman, always worrying about her sister. Always wanting the bigger better life. Now what do you got? Where’s your sister, May?” it says, eyes deep as graves.

  “Shut up!” I scream at it. “Don’t you talk about May!”

  “Who needs the meds now, wonder woman?”

  “You’re a head on a wall. You’re as dead as May. You can’t speak!”

  “Supergirls stand together,” it says mimicking our childhood voices. “Supergirls stay together.”

  My shoulder aches, but I bite my lip and twist on my heel.

  It whistles, high pitched and sharp, as I pour gasoline all over the living room, the stalker room and the sisters of pain. The pitch grows unbearable as I dump the gas halfway down the cellar stairs.