Sick House

by Jeff Strand

  "Well, you are," said Adeline. "Should we work together to get out of this, or should we waste time trying to kill each other?"

  Working with this maniac wasn't actually an option. She was just hoping to keep his guard down for a moment while she tried to kill him. She didn't have the luxury of trying to subdue him. He had to die.

  "I guess we have to try to kill each other," said Fletcher.

  Adeline ran for the cupboard where she kept the pots and pans. Fletcher ran for a drawer. There were several drawers in the kitchen, but somehow the creep was lucky enough to go straight for the one where they kept the knives.

  She grabbed a metal saucepan. Fletcher grabbed a butcher knife.

  Adeline held the saucepan up in front of her, defensively. He could stab her to death much more easily than she could beat him to death. Yet she had one big offensive advantage: she was a mother protecting her children. You did not fuck with a mother protecting her children if you wanted to live.

  Fletcher was bigger, stronger, and scarier, but Adeline knew she could beat him through sheer force of will.

  He might not expect her to charge right at him, so that's what she did. If her plan worked perfectly, she'd smack the butcher knife out of his hand, knock him to the floor with a brutal saucepan blow to the forehead, check to make sure Paige and Naomi weren't watching, and then bash the saucepan against his skull until his brain was visible.

  She figured he would hold his ground. She didn't anticipate that he'd fling the butcher knife at her.

  It got her in the right shoulder. Probably not where he was aiming. The knife went in deep but didn't stick, so it fell to the tile floor with a clatter, to be quickly joined by the saucepan that fell out of her hand as her fingers spasmed.

  Fletcher pulled another knife out of the open drawer. He'd already taken their biggest one, but the bread knife was no joke.

  Adeline bent down and picked up the saucepan with her left hand. The fingers on her right hand were still twitching but she managed to grab the butcher knife as well. She stood back up and held them like a sword and shield.

  The butcher knife dropped out of her hand.

  Fletcher chuckled.

  His amused reaction was useful because it gave Adeline an extra boost of rage. She ran at him, ready to dodge if he threw the other knife at her.

  He didn't throw the knife, nor did he stab her with it.

  When she swung the saucepan at his head, though, he blocked it with his free hand. This was, of course, the hand that had just been mangled by the doorknob. Adeline thought she heard some bones shatter above the clang.

  Credit where it was due: instead of letting out a high-pitched shriek and crumpling to the floor in tears, as any sensible person would have done, Fletcher punched her in the face. He could have stabbed her in the face, since that hand was clutching the knife, but for some reason he chose to punch her instead.

  It was one hell of a punch. Adeline spat out one tooth and accidentally swallowed another. She hoped to live long enough to suffer the discomfort of that tooth making its way through her system.

  He punched her again, and she crashed into the counter.

  "Mommy!" Naomi screamed.

  "Stay where you are!" said Adeline, though her words were garbled. Blood was pouring from her mouth again. But she hadn't dropped the saucepan.

  Fletcher held up the knife. "Want it in the gut or the neck?" His face was contorted with pain, and Adeline didn't think his heart was really in the taunt.

  "Dealer's choice," said Adeline. It was a staggeringly inept comeback, but hopefully the weak attempt at a clever retort made it clear that her spirit wasn't broken.

  Fletcher rushed at her. She swung the saucepan at him, aiming for his face. He blocked the swing with the same hand that had taken so much abuse already. Adeline didn't understand why he kept using that hand. Apparently his time in Almost-Hell had made him good at enduring pain.

  This time she was certain she'd broken one of his fingers, because his middle digit was now bent backwards over the top of his hand.

  Adeline swung once more. Instead of using his broken, swollen, burnt, and leaking hand to block it, Fletcher used the bread knife. Neither of them dropped their weapons, and no additional harm was caused to either of their bodies.

  Fletcher stomped on Adeline's foot. In a fight where Adeline had been struck in the shoulder by a butcher knife, this shouldn't have been his most impactful move up to this point. But he was a big guy and it felt like he'd splattered her foot into mush.

  This time, her attempt to bash him in the face with the saucepan was pathetic.

  He slammed the knife into her shoulder, almost getting her in the same spot as before but missing by about half an inch. When he released his grip on the knife, it remained in place. He wrenched the saucepan out of her hand and smacked her across the face with it.

  Adeline didn't think she lost any additional teeth.

  At least not until she dropped to the floor, striking the side of her head. Half a molar broke off.

  The fight had most definitely not been beaten out of her, but as Fletcher crouched down over her and wrapped his hands around her neck, she wasn't sure that it mattered.

  * * *

  Boyd slowly walked toward the home invaders, although he supposed that he was the invader right now. Nobody else was in the movie theater. Maddox and Heck didn't move as he stepped into the second row. Nor did they seem to notice as he crept up directly behind them.

  Could it really be this easy?

  The psychos were in two places at once, but maybe their consciousness was only in the real world. If he had a weapon, he could give them each a quick stab in the back of the neck and end this. He didn't see the third one, so if things were going well on the other side, Fletcher might be trapped beneath six feet of dirt right now.

  Lucid dreaming. This was like lucid dreaming. In a lucid dream, if he wanted a weapon, he could create one. He wanted a great big shiny axe. One so sharp that it could cleave their skulls in half with one swing.

  He was holding a weapon. It didn't appear in his hand; it was simply like he'd been holding it all along.

  It wasn't a great big shiny axe. It was a small, rusty hatchet. Boyd ran his finger along the edge of the blade. It was about as sharp as the edge of a silver dollar. So he wouldn't be cleaving any skulls in half with a single blow, but he could sure as hell finish off a couple of comatose moviegoers.

  No time to waste. He raised the hatchet above Heck's head, then slammed it down as hard as he could. The blade sunk deep, far deeper than Boyd would have expected, as if it were passing through candle wax instead of bone.

  The hatchet popped out of Boyd's hand as Heck stood up.

  * * *

  "You think it was funny watching me choke?" Fletcher asked, trying to crush her throat. "Did you get a great big laugh out of that? Huh?"

  Adeline hadn't expressed any amusement over his ghostly plight. She'd actually found it rather disturbing. But if Fletcher believed that they were all enjoying a merry joke at his expense, there probably wasn't much she could do to convince him otherwise.

  She couldn't breathe.

  Fletcher's eyes were wide, crazed. You had to be insane to try to strangle somebody when one of your hands was a ruined mess.

  She tried to knee him in the groin, but he wasn't positioned correctly. Her punches to his sides were weak and completely ineffectual.

  Fletcher pushed down even harder against her neck. Another finger bone snapped. He didn't look like he even cared.

  Though Adeline's spirit was still "the angry mother you don't want to fuck with," her body was fading fast.

  * * *

  Heck left the hatchet imbedded in the back of his head as he turned around to face Boyd. He swiped at Boyd with a taloned hand, slashing across his chest, removing a huge flap of flesh as easily as if it were the skin on a bowl of soup that had been left sitting too long.

  The top layer of Boyd's chest dangled from Hec
k's talons. Heck shook it off his hand.

  Boyd didn't even glance down at himself. He didn't want to see what his chest looked like without skin.

  Heck grinned. "Oh, that's fucked up."

  Now Boyd couldn't help himself. He looked down. Bloody fish heads, at least a dozen of them, protruded from his skinless chest, mouths opening and closing.

  Boyd wanted to throw up. But he should embrace this. Welcome the surrealism. Treat it as a sick joke.

  He grabbed at one of the heads, intending to pull it out of his chest and pop it into his mouth. He couldn't get a hold of it; it was too slimy. His hand kept slipping off, even when he tried to dig his fingers into one of their mouths.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Heck asked.

  Boyd clenched his chest muscles, hoping that the fish would fire out of his body like bullets. They didn't.

  Heck held up a pair of garden shears. The black metal blades were long enough to slice through an entire oak tree. He pried the blades open. Boyd's feet, which were now literally nailed to the floor, wouldn't move.

  Embrace this...

  He calmly stood there.

  Heck thrust the shears at him, then closed the blades, neatly severing Boyd's head.

  His head bounced on the floor of the theater, which was sticky with spilled sodas, buttered popcorn, and candy.

  This was going to be difficult to embrace.

  * * *

  Adeline was getting dizzy from lack of oxygen. She kept trying to struggle but it wasn't doing any good. It might be time to start praying that Boyd, Paige, and Naomi made it out of this without her.

  Paige was right there, blurry.

  Holding something.

  Glass shattered.

  Fletcher's grip on Adeline's neck loosened. His face shot into sharp focus, blood trickling down his forehead. Paige held the handle of a broken bottle of olive oil.

  She knelt down and jammed the handle into his back.

  Adeline pulled herself out from underneath him. Paige hoisted the glass handle, preparing to stab him again.

  "No!" said Adeline.

  Paige hesitated. "But he—"

  "Go back with Naomi."

  Paige shook her head. "He was going to kill you."

  "I know he was, honey. And I'm going to take care of it. I don't want you to see it or be part of it. Keep your sister safe. It'll be over in a minute."

  Adeline tried to stand but couldn't quite do it. Paige helped her up. Fletcher remained on the floor, groaning.

  "Go," Adeline said. Her children were going to need every therapist in the world after this was over, but she didn't want to make it even worse. This was a sight that would never leave their mind's eye.

  Paige reluctantly returned to the hallway with Naomi.

  "Don't watch," said Adeline. "Don't let Naomi watch. Go in the living room. I'll be right there."

  Paige took Naomi's hand and led her out of sight. Adeline opened a cabinet and took out the crockpot. It had been a present from her parents about five years ago. She rarely used it and it was almost one of the possessions that didn't make it from the apartment to the house. This would most definitely not be in the spirit in which their gift was intended.

  Fletcher wiped some blood from his scalp. "You don't need to do that," he said.

  Adeline slammed the crockpot down upon his skull.

  Fletcher's entire body convulsed.

  She bashed him a second time. The ceramic inner bowl fell out and broke in half.

  Adeline bashed him again with the stainless steel exterior.

  His skull was caved in enough that he would not be moving, speaking, or breathing ever again. Adeline didn't want to regress into complete savagery, so she only bashed him twice more, splattering the contents of his cranium all over the thoughtful gift.

  The Gardner family had many problems remaining in their lives, but Cliff Fletcher was not one of them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Embrace this.

  Everything was fine.

  Ideal, even.

  Many people would love to be a severed head. Less responsibility. Nobody telling you to lose weight. No fish heads protruding from your chest. Of course, it was more difficult to see a movie screen, as he was proving to himself right now, but you had to take the bad with the good.

  Heck climbed over the seat. The hatchet was still buried in his head. "Not as easy as you thought, huh?" he asked.

  Embrace this.

  Hell can be fun with the right attitude.

  Boyd wanted to say, "I like a challenge," but no words came out. He assumed it was because he no longer had lungs. This was an odd time for the logic of biology to play a role.

  He should probably try to acquire a new body.

  Now his head was on a new body.

  He would've loved for it to be a cartoonishly muscular body, or a dragon's body, or a voluptuous woman's body, or something amusing or powerful like that. Instead, his severed head was attached (with what felt like duct tape) to a body that looked like it was one missed meal away from starving to death. The kind of depleted frame you'd see on a commercial asking you to give generously.

  Heck reached back and wrenched the hatchet out of his head. "I don't even need this to cut you in half," said Heck. "I could just use my fingernail."

  New body. He needed a new body.

  His new body had red, cracked skin that itched so badly that he couldn't stop himself from violently scratching, even as flakes of skin came off. Even as chunks of skin came off. It was a relief to scrape his flesh down to the bone.

  New body.

  He was covered in pustules. The itching hadn't ceased, though now he felt like he had every sexually transmitted disease with which humanity had ever been afflicted. Pustules on his tongue burst as he ran it over the bubbling roof of his mouth.

  New body.

  Nope. Didn't work. Same pustule-covered body.

  "What did you hope to accomplish here?" asked Heck.

  There was too much pus in Boyd's mouth for him to answer.

  Embrace this.

  Lucid dream.

  Sick joke.

  He was not in a land of eternal torment. He was in a very dark, very twisted playground. He could do whatever he wanted. He could command a skeleton army. He could ride a black stallion with glowing eyes and breath of fire.

  The itching was so maddening that he ran his fingernails all the way down his chest. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Heck held out his index finger, middle finger, and thumb, then slammed them into Boyd's face. They sunk all the way to the second knuckle. He pulled them out, leaving holes in Boyd's forehead and the bridge of his nose.

  "Not what I meant to do," Heck admitted. "I was going for your eyes. Trying to use you like a bowling ball."

  New body.

  Nope. Same itchy pustule-ridden one. He'd take literally anything over this, even the severed head on the sticky floor.

  Visions of Paige began to float around the movie theater, a hundred bonus screens of content. In one, she was slashing her wrists. In another, she was downing a bottle full of pills. In another, she shoved a revolver into her mouth. Stepped in front of a bus. Draped a noose around her neck. Leapt off a bridge.

  "You're losing," said Heck.

  New body.

  Old body. His real body.

  Not his real body. His real body was bleeding to death in his basement. He was in his body the way it looked before the ghosts arrived.

  Paige died around him, over and over, and Boyd mentally praised her dedication to the cause and her ingenuity. There she was trying to kill herself with a power drill. How many thirteen-year-old girls would commit suicide with a power drill? Not very damn many. Or maybe in that vision she wasn't trying to kill herself. Maybe she was trying to give herself a lobotomy. If you took a survey of a thousand thirteen-year-old girls and asked them to describe how you went about lobotomizing yourself, maybe two of them would get it right, and the other one would be some fucked-up k
id who was planning to lobotomize her enemies.

  He was proud of his daughter.

  No, he—

  Yes, he was. He was the proudest father in the world. Look at the way those globs of brain matter exploded out of the back of her head, creating abstract art on the wall behind her. That was goddamn talent.

  Pin a medal on that kid. Use a 1st place trophy to scoop up her brains.

  The images disappeared.

  Lucid dreaming. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Theme park ride. Carnival. Haunted house—the fun kind.

  A whole new set of images appeared. Scary clowns. Clowns beckoning to children. Clowns with knives. Clowns with fangs.

  Boyd wasn't scared of clowns. Never had been. He thought their antics were delightfully amusing, just as they intended.

  The clowns vanished.

  Boyd punched Heck in the face. His fist went all the way through. He slid his hand out then licked the red goop off his fingers, because he was enjoying the ride.

  Heck's face reconstructed itself.

  Boyd punched him again. He wished he could grab Heck's uvula and dangle it in front of his face but that wasn't working out.

  Heck's face reconstructed itself around Boyd's fist. Pulling it free was difficult, though he managed.

  Heck swung at him with talons that had sprouted to six feet long. Boyd ducked out of the way.

  No, wait. He hadn't quite ducked out of the way. The top of his head slid off.

  New head.

  Boyd grabbed a plastic cup from one of the seat's drink holders. He squeezed it, sending a spray of cola-colored carbonated beverage into Heck's face. His face began to sizzle and smoke.

  Maddox continued to watch the movie, motionless.

  Boyd yanked the screaming Heck by the back of his collar and dragged him over to the wall. Boyd slammed him against it, crushing his head into slime.

  Now Heck was on the other side of the theater, back to normal. How was there supposed to be a winner in a fight where they both kept coming back to life?

  Perhaps there wasn't. Perhaps he was doomed to keep doing this forever.