by Jonas Saul
“Finding anything?”
“No.”
She set the video recorder on the side counter and pulled one of the kitchen chairs out to sit.
“Are you still mad at me?” she asked.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m just mad.”
She nodded even though he wasn’t looking at her. “Do you think we made a mistake with this house?”
“No.”
She started playing with her hair, rolling it in her fingers and then drawing it out to its full length.
“Me neither. Eric, are we going to be okay?”
“Why do you keep asking me questions? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Sorry.”
A sudden sadness fell on her like a rough blanket coated her soul.
For the next ten minutes, as the sun descended outside and evening rose in a cacophony of insect chorus, Tessa watched Eric work on the oven.
After inspecting the inside meticulously, he opened a box that sat on the counter beside the stove. With a small drill he punched two holes in the stove, one at the top of the door and one above where the door shut.
While she sat at the kitchen table, not saying a word, she watched her husband affix a lock on their new stove.
When he was done, she asked, “What is that for?”
“When the door closes it will lock automatically. You need to push these three small buttons in the order I tell you to so that it’ll open. Only you and I will know the code. That means, anything inside will never be able to get out and if a stranger is taunting us in any way, he or she won’t be able to get in.”
“Why did you say, he or she?” Tessa asked. “Are you alluding to me?”
He turned to look at her. “Feeling guilty about something? Want to come clean? Now’s the time.”
He waited, but she didn’t respond. She was too shocked at the way he was talking to her. He’d never been like this before. Ever.
Eric finished the lock and tested it. It held firm each time. He showed her the three-digit code and left the room.
Tessa sat at the kitchen table alone with her thoughts and her sorrow.
Chapter 8
Tessa lay in bed but couldn’t sleep. Eric tossed and turned beside her.
They’d fought earlier. She had protested the use of the lock on the oven door because it wasn’t about the oven — what had happened was more about the security of their home. Stop the intruder from entering and then the oven becomes a non-issue. Eric argued that the intruder was attempting to send them a message and the oven acted as the messenger — removing the oven from the equation meant no more messages.
This was so unlike them. They’d had arguments like any other couple, but never to this degree. The bed hadn’t been put together because he was too tired and it was too hot. They lay on the box spring and mattress on the floor of their master bedroom.
He had time to hook locks up to our new oven and borrow a weapon from the local cop, but not enough time to set up our bed like he’d promised.
The anger she had directed at him earlier had more to do with his behavior on their first day in their new house than her fear.
The movers had delivered all their belongings two days before they’d arrived. Everything was where it was supposed to be. They had been prepared to spend the long May weekend painting and cleaning the house but instead, the weekend had started off with a fight.
She looked over at the window to see if it was open. The moon illuminated the sill with its soft white light. The sounds of the night had died off, leaving her with the cadence of Eric’s breathing.
She had been lying in bed at least two hours. The heat in the room seemed to be increasing. The back of her neck was slick with sweat. She eased off the mattress slowly, trying not to wake Eric.
On the balls of her feet, she made no noise as she reached the window. As hard as she tugged, it wouldn’t budge.
Sweat beaded down into her eyes. She wiped it away in frustration and headed out of the room. In the kitchen, the tape recorder still sat on the counter. She took one look at it, opened the fridge and pulled out the bottled water. She drank almost half of it. She used the towel by the sink to wipe her face and neck off.
Why the hell is it so hot in here?
She thought of the rain and how it had sizzled off the house.
Why didn’t I tell Eric about that?
Without thinking, she tilted the bottle of water until a fat drip left the lip and fell to the floor. It hit and spread out a little with minor splatter. Then it bubbled up. The small bubbles danced on the surface of the wood and decreased in size until they disappeared. The floor increased in heat under her feet in the same second it took for the drop of water to disappear.
“What the fuck is going on?”
It suddenly felt like she stood on hot pavement in the middle of a heat wave in August. She had to alternate feet as the heat under her rose.
She left the kitchen and grabbed her shoes at the door. After they were on, she walked back into the kitchen, her feet tucked in socks and shoes.
Should I wake Eric up and tell him, or film it and prove to him that there’s a problem?
Without another thought, Tessa grabbed the recorder, hit the record button and set the camera on the kitchen table with its back supported on a book to aim camera down.
She brought the water bottle close so it was directly in front of the camera. Moving slowly, she tilted the open bottle and let a large drop of water escape.
She could still detect heat through her shoes, but not enough to make her hop on the spot.
The water hit the wooden floor and dissolved in front of the camera just as it had the moment before.
“Holy fuck. I’ve got that on camera too.”
She turned to lift the camera up but her feet stuck, like she’d stepped in gum. The floor had heated up so much that the bottom of her rubber soles had melted into the floor. Within seconds she’d be standing on the burning floor in her sock feet.
She lifted her legs hard, dislodging each shoe, but with every step, they stuck and burned again.
The floor reminded her of a hot quicksand.
Something was burning the house from the basement up.
But we don’t have a basement.
From under the house, a massive amount of heat rose up and grabbed hold of her. In a panic, she tried to run from the kitchen but lost her balance. When she thrust both hands out to break her fall, they made contact with the floor. The pain was instant and intense. Tessa screamed as the flesh on each fingertip and the base of her hand melted off.
Something grabbed her from behind and lifted her.
Eric shouted from upstairs. In her state of panic and fear, she thought she heard him yell for her to be quiet, that he was trying to sleep.
The pain grew, the heat rose, and all she could think about was escaping. She struggled with all the strength she could muster, but her limbs were held firm.
The oven door sat open.
This is Eric’s doing somehow. Only the two of us know the code.
Her mind slipped as her eyes rolled back in her head. Consciousness wavered. She struggled hard to stay alert.
Whatever held her seared its imprints on her skin, as if she were being branded. Her eyes bulged as the pressure in her head increased.
She was paralyzed. She could do nothing as, one by one, each foot was lifted into the oven. Her mind raged at her limbs in protest, but whatever held her, held firm and manipulated her to its will.
Her waist entered the open maw of the oven. There was no way her whole body would fit in the small square cavern. At the point where she could go no further, she was shoved in hard, both hips breaking under the pressure until her upper body cleared the door, her arms crushing in around her chest.
Near her shoulders, as her head got forced down and in, she felt a subtle shift in her spine and then the pain below the waist disappeared.
The invisible hands let go the second the oven’s door
closed. She gasped and took in a deep breath. She could barely move in the cramped space. Pain accompanied every breath as her body played the game Twister with itself. In the confined space, she could only move her eyes. Her left hand lay jammed against the oven door. She pushed hard, but to no avail. The door simply wouldn’t budge.
The new lock. It locks the instant the door closes.
She screamed, her eyes watering, her mouth stuck open.
Through the little window in the oven door, she saw her video recorder on the kitchen table aimed at the stove, the red light indicating it was still recording.
The kitchen floor had burned her hands bad and whatever picked her up and lifted her into the oven had been strong and remained unseen.
Haunted?
A surreal, intense fear gripped her at the soft clicking sound.
The elements had been turned on.
“No!” she shouted and screamed again as she redoubled her efforts on the oven’s door. Her hands ached to the point of numbness.
The element below her heated up. In moments it would be red, and she sat on it with nowhere to go.
Whatever put her in the oven intended to burn her alive just like the rat and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
With every ounce of strength she still possessed, Tessa struggled inside the tight confines of the oven as the elements heated to over three hundred degrees, beginning the process of burning her where she crouched.
Before her mind slipped off and her heart stopped, she could feel her skin cooking, melting. Blood poured, but cauterized where it met the burners, which seared deeper through her skin until bones met the heat directly.
Her last vision was of the tape recorder. The once rosy skin of her cheeks melted against the oven window, both her eyes dried up and decreased in size as the water content of her body evaporated.
Tessa died knowing it wasn’t just the elements of an oven that killed her. Something else was in there with her. Something much hotter and angrier.
She knew she was just another victim of the burning and Eric would be next.
Chapter 9
Friday, June 1, 2012…
Clayton’s screen flickered after the image of Tessa in the oven door’s window melted and faded into a mash of skin and blood cooking to a blackness he would never forget.
He had watched as she videotaped the water drip out and sizzle on the floor. He’d seen how she almost floated into the oven and how, on its own, the door slammed closed, engaging the external lock. As morbid as the sight was, Clayton watched while young Tessa cooked in her own oven.
He’d suspected something had been going on in the house for years but he’d never known for sure. Many years of disappearances, and people who lived in the area refused to go near the house.
He’d always figured it was the natives driving people away. Many years ago, the Indians claimed that area as theirs.
He sat and watched the tape until nothing but white noise filled his screen.
Then he decided what he must do.
Giving the gun to Eric was a precaution. If it really was the natives, then that couple needed protection if they were about to go missing. Since no one had seen them in town except for him, he’d figured they’d gone back to where it was they came from. Now that Tessa’s family had reported them missing, he needed to do something about that. Now he had proof that Tessa was forced into the oven and burnt alive. That was enough for him to enter the house and see for himself what was really going on.
He made one phone call and set his backup plan in place.
He grabbed two large boxes of black gunpowder and carried them out to his trunk. In a little box on the right, he grabbed the electric match that would ignite the powder. He held it up in front of his face and examined the small piece of thin resistance wire coated with a flammable substance. A small current through it and the wire would heat up, igniting the powder. He had done his research and bought the e-match at the local hobby shop where they sold rocket supplies.
If everything went to shit, he had decided last year after the disappearance of Jared Tavallo, his brother-in-law, that whatever was in that house would have to deal with his homemade car bomb.
He put everything in his trunk, jumped in the cruiser, flicked the lights on and raced away with the VHS tape in the passenger seat beside him.
Chapter 10
Clayton arrived at the house before anyone else. He sat in his cruiser and stared at the house’s windows, trying to imagine all the terrors that had gone on inside its walls. It felt like the house watched him too, like it was alive.
The sun moved toward the horizon, the sky darkening in the east first. It would be full dark soon, and he wouldn’t set foot inside the house after that, so he opened his door and got out, determined to get the answers he needed.
After adjusting his gun belt, he started for the front steps. There were no sounds in the wilderness surrounding the property. No insects, frogs, or mating calls. Nothing. The silence would normally be welcoming, but this close to the house where Tessa had been murdered two weeks ago, the lack of noise only caused unease.
He set one boot on the steps, pushed down and then lifted his foot off again. The rubber sole remained intact.
He walked up the porch steps and stood in front of the door. One more check of his boots. They weren’t melting.
Conscious of his duty and responsibilities, Clayton knocked on the door and waited. After a minute, he knocked again and turned to examine the woods behind him. All he could see as the sun dropped below the ridge of mountains were pockets of black where the trees were thick. He was running out of time.
He tried the door knob. It turned without a key. One shove and the door opened all the way to the stopper.
The inside looked nice and clean. Everything had its place. Furniture sat in a comfortable arrangement, surrounding a marble coffee table.
Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps what he saw on the tape was someone’s amateur attempt at a horror movie — something to be uploaded onto YouTube. A prank. Someone got punked.
On the other hand, if it was real, it was his job to do what he had to do.
He pulled a flashlight from his belt and stepped inside the house. Immediately, the distinctive odor of something burnt hit Clayton. Not like bread left too long in the toaster. More like flesh and hair. He almost turned around and walked out, but he knew if he did, it would be a long time to build up enough nerve to ever come back.
The dim light outside barely made an impression in the living room. In the gloom of the living room, his flashlight lacked any real power.
I’ll have to check the batteries tomorrow.
He made it to the door of the kitchen and saw the lock on the stove. The oven door was shut, the lock engaged. There was a good chance that Tessa’s body would still be inside.
He took one last look at his boots.
All okay. So far.
He took a deep breath, strode across the kitchen floor and shone his flashlight into the little window on the door of the oven.
There was nothing to see. The window was covered in a black film like someone had over-broiled steaks, and grease had bubbled up to seal any view from the outside.
He tried the handle. It didn’t budge. The lock held the oven door firm.
Now or never, he said to himself as he pulled out his sidearm. He resolved to never enter this house again, but he had to look inside the oven.
Off in the distance a siren approached.
Backup’s arriving.
His arm outstretched, face turned away, Clayton fired a bullet at the lock, shattering it into tiny fragments of metal.
After holstering his weapon, he gripped the handle and counted to three. Then he eased it down.
Inside, the tell-tale signs of what was once a human body, now melted and burned to a misshapen lump of blackened flesh and bone.
He averted his eyes to keep what little he had in his stomach right where it was. He opened the door fart
her and examined the oven’s contents closer.
The body was more like a mass of black juices and black flakes of skin. The bottom of the oven was covered.
The elements didn’t get everything.
A charred Medic-Alert bracelet stuck out of the lump of burned meat, like the one Eric had worn in the two times Clayton had met him.
How did Eric get in here too?
