by Aaron Dries
The wind continued to tear at the walls, flipping the pages of the Bible on the bedside table.
Part Four: The Basement
Chapter Thirty-Six
Morning light crept across North Bend. The fog retreated back into the mountains as though cowering and defeated. Tweeds Cafe was already open and welcoming its first customers of the day. Truck drivers ran from their wood-carting lorries to grab a quick coffee at the Shell on East North Bend Way.
And Marshall continued to scream.
His face was swollen from the punches he’d received, making it difficult to see out of his left eye. His pulse could be felt in every bruise, in the slit of every jagged cut. It had taken him a good five minutes to realize that he was wearing nothing but the silk boxer shorts he’d absentmindedly packed before leaving Vancouver. They were bright red and covered in small smiling devils. His skin was prickled with goose flesh. A thin river of dried blood ran down his chest from his split lip and pooled in his bellybutton.
Marshall had no idea how long he’d been out.
He wrestled against the ropes, each dragging moment as painful as the binds around his wrists, ankles and neck. He’d been tied to an old hospital chair; the bottom was nothing more than a toilet seat, which puckered his buttocks into an awkward kiss. The chair’s frame was freckled with rust and the wheels had been removed. The legs had been welded to a large iron plate that made tipping over impossible.
“He-eeelp!” Marshall bellowed again as his throat burned red-hot. He wept messy tears, his purple bruises throbbing with each heave. The bind cut into his neck when he let his head slump against his shoulder.
His thoughts churned.
He saw their old family breakfast table in Sydney, where Noah sat dividing up his Fruit Loops by color; the green ones were his favorite. He wore a milk moustache and his grey school shorts were speckled with mud.
The surveillance footage of his son climbing over the balustrade at the mall. Falling through the air in slow motion. The clown reaching out to grab him.
Noah’s brains on the hospital floor.
Unknown faces at the funeral. The flashing lights of photographers.
The small blue memorial ribbons tied to trees all around James Bridge.
Claire in the Vancouver bookshop as she turned away from him—
That last vision hurt. He wished he’d reached out to her that evening and pulled her into a hug. Kissing her like they used to do before everything went to shit.
Claire looking at him over a bowl of Massaman curry.
Her face, so full of pain during labor and she squeezed his hand. She’d cursed like a sailor that day, and had needed stitches. The cry of the baby.
The USB stick falling through the air from the slit in the back of the teddy bear. He wished he’d never found it, never put it in the computer.
The emails. The websites.
Driving into North Bend and seeing Mount Si for the first time, and that horrible sick feeling, the feeling of dread in his stomach like a lump of coal. Although he’d refused to admit it, there were thoughts of murder on his mind. The bulging eyes, the lips turning blue…
The teenager at the park, his legs trailing off into mist. The iPod dangling out of the collar of his shirt.
Marshall’s eyes bolted open. He could taste bile. Chemicals.
He sat in the hard chair—a man strapped to a metal skeleton, devoid of energy. Wasted. “Please,” he whispered. Over and over he spoke the word, but after a few minutes of this repeated mantra, it lost its meaning. He was alone, wrapped in silence. In the basement.
A bare bulb hung from the ceiling on a long wire and burned so bright it hurt to look at. The floor beneath his feet was cold cement, speckled with grease stains and flecks of saw dust. The room was as musty as the rear cupboard in their Sydney kitchen; there, when they were moving out, he’d found an old bag of potatoes. The vegetables had turned a dank green and sprouted arms. They looked like diseased crabs.
The walls were lined with upright mattresses. Sound insulation, Marshall assumed. This second wall stretched around every corner, making the basement seem smaller than it actually was, and disappeared into the shadows behind the stairs. The stairs were four meters from where he was sitting, taunting him. They led up to a heavy wooden door; the door handle was made of glass.
Everywhere he turned he saw evidence of what type of person was holding him captive; furnishings that seemed an extension of some sad, demented mind. Cactus grew in pots, their thorns long and sharp. Some of the mattresses were draped in patterned towels and sheets. A faded sunset. A Japanese garden. Flower prints. The Mona Lisa. Will Smith in Independence Day. A matted American flag was laid out at the base of the stairs. Barbed-wire ringed the room like glimmering webs, and snagged in its spikes were shreds of clothing, locks of bloodied hair. In one corner were the remains of a shelf. A huge crucifix with a wooden Christ nailed at its crux lay on its side against a mattress. There was a drain in the middle of the room; the grate was stained with rust and mold. Twelve mobiles hung from the ceiling, casting shadows over the walls. There were airplanes and dinosaurs, oriental fans and dream catchers. Some were primitive in design and assembly, others looked as though crafted by a caring, adult hand. There were hundreds of pieces of stained glass in different sizes and color, glued to the mattresses.
The stained glass frightened him the most. He couldn’t say why.
Each shard glowed in the light from the bulb, casting multicolored reflections in every direction. His body was painted in yellow, blue, purple, red and green splashes.
The room looked like a bombed cathedral and there Marshall sat at its center.
The door at the top of the stairs opened.
Steel-capped boots, speckled with mud, thumped down the stairs. The laces were untied and their silver ends dragged behind, tapping against the wood.
Marshall braced himself, his muscles flexing. “What do you want?” he asked, trying to sound firm and under control. He failed. There was no reply.
The man stepped onto the flag and stopped. He stood well over six feet tall and wore no shirt. A thick belt with a silver eagle buckle held up his loose-fitting, tawny trousers. His bulging stomach and flaccid man-tits obscured the muscle beneath.
Marshall noted every detail. If he ever escaped from this hellhole, he wanted to provide the police an extensive description of the man. He wanted this motherfucker caught, tried and locked up forever.
And throw away the key.
No. On second thought, give the key to me. I’ll make sure he never finds it.
Seeing the man standing there sent Marshall reeling. It drove his heart into violent rhythms.
Marshall remembered going into the Men’s toilets at the Vancouver Greyhound station. He closed the stall door and saw a piece of graffiti scrawled in a sloppy hand. It read:
Of all the things I’ve lost
I miss my mind the most
It seemed very unlikely that some commuter had sat there on the holy crown and scribbled it down whilst pinching off a loaf, with that horrible elevator music playing over the speakers, some guy jerking off in the next stall. In fact, he was sure he’d read it before. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place the author. Was it Wilde? Twain? In the end it didn’t matter. It was its prophetic nature that haunted him now. A shiver ran through him.
The man had a tattoo on his right arm—a faded Madonna on a seat of clouds.
His neck—almost like a footballer’s, streaked with veins.
His hands—thick fingered, the nails kept long.
“Please let me go,” Marshall said, again to no answer. He watched the man’s chest —painted in the colors from the stained glass—rise and fall. He could hear a rattle in there somewhere.
I hope you’ve got pneumonia, you fuck. I hope you got it and I hope you fucking die. You bastard. You sick cunt. Fuck you.
Marshall looked the man in the face and saw the same dark eyes that had glared at him through the broke
n door—there were almost no whites to them, just wide, inky pupils. His nose was crooked, as though broken years before and reset. Receding hairline, yellowed teeth and wrinkled skin. He looked ordinary, almost pedestrian.
He looks like everyone, Marshall thought. He looks like nobody.
The man studied his catch for a full minute, twisting his head from left to right in curious little jerks.
And all along went that rattle behind his rib cage.
Marshall lowered his gaze. It was impossible to look into those eyes for too long. He remembered the graffiti and looked at his bruised knees.
“Let me go…please,” he said, an almost childlike intonation on the final word. “I won’t tell anyone anything. You’ll never see me again. I won’t cause you any trouble, I swear.”
The man turned away and walked around the back of the stairs, slipping out of sight. Marshall sat there, wide-eyed and waited. Panic set in and he fought against his constraints again. They held tight.
It was then that he realized there was no window. No natural light. No air.
Oh, Jesus—
Marshall heard the sound of running water and only then became aware of his sudden thirst. He felt dry, as though his chest were on fire, his skin peeling off in ashy flakes.
The clink of glass.
Please, God.
The tap turned off and the silence returned. Marshall held his breath, exhaling only once he saw the man slip out from behind the staircase. In his hands he held a tray and atop it was a glass of water and a wash-basin. Next to it was an old-fashioned straight razor with a bone white handle.
Whatever air had been in Marshall’s lungs slipped away; he tried to catch it but choked instead. “G-go away!” he screamed, his voice coming out in a girlish wail.
“Sh-hhhh,” said the man.
It wasn’t a sentence. Not even a word. Just a sound.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
A rush of air between cracked, scabby lips.
It was almost nothing and yet Marshall felt it suck the life right out of him. The razor could have swiped down right then, opened his throat, and he would have continued to sit there, silent and slack-jawed.
But the razor didn’t come down. There was no bloodshed.
Yet.
The man set the tray down on the floor next to the drain with a gentle tinkle. He then took the glass of water, stood up—bones cracking in his back—and drew closer. The glass was extended towards Marshall’s mouth; it glowed bright green in the reflected light. He felt the lip of the glass touch his own, and after a moment of teasing, the water ran into his mouth. Down his throat. He felt better almost instantly—a flower blooming in fast motion. Marshall could see more clearly. It was an amazing transformation. He gagged, water running down his neck, and finished the drink.
The man looked down at him and smiled. He took the glass away and set it on the concrete.
Do something, say something, Marshall told himself. But I don’t know what to do. What to say.
A great inertia had brought him to this place with incomprehensible speed; he felt that same power pushing him further, only his mind struggled to keep up. He felt stupid, lamed.
Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.
Marshall could do nothing but watch the man pick up the washbasin, which was filled with soapy water, and dip his hands into it. He could do nothing but relent to the man’s touch against his stubbled cheekbones when he rubbed the suds into his skin.
Marshall was helpless.
The man snatched up the razor—it glowed, too, a bright, cartoonish yellow. Just as he had slipped behind the staircase, the man now slipped behind Marshall’s back, out of sight once more.
A pause. A single moment extended out to its absolute breaking point, in which he didn’t breathe and couldn’t think. There was just the staircase ahead of him. The open door at the very top.
…And then the razor reappeared, gliding into Marshall’s sight, slow and delicate. The blade burned purple. He gasped and didn’t dare move.
The razor touched the hollow of his throat—it was there that the suds were thickest—and pushed through the slick to tickle the stubble beneath. Marshall knew that at any moment the blade would be in his skin, in his muscle, blood spurting from his split throat.
I’m going to die here.
It was such a simple, paralyzing fact. He had no control over his life anymore; no control over his flesh. He was at the whim of the man who had caught him, and his blade.
And he had nobody to blame except himself.
I should have gone to the police.
I should never have come here.
Shouldda-couldda-wouldda, as we used to say in school. Read it and weep.
The blade slid up his neck, carving a gap in the white foam to reveal pink skin. Marshall’s jaw was clenched tight. Sweat rolled down his chest in shining ribbons. The blade skidded into the air and he watched it hover near his nose. He expected to see it dripping red, but there were only soap and stray hairs to be found—a sight that unnerved him deeply. It was almost perverse. He could vividly recall one of his friends on the bus to school, sitting in front of him with a lick of shaving cream below his right ear. It had taken Marshall’s breath away. We’re growing up, that snow-white residue seemed to imply. We’re becoming men. It made him smile, and had been thrilling in the same way that looking at the older kids’ dirty magazines had been, when they got passed around after class. It was just another glimpse of what the future had in store for them, and that was worth getting excited over. Marshall never went on to master shaving—he’d had his fair share of nicks and cuts—but it had nonetheless become a staple part of his life, and even found its monotony calming. But seeing the blade before him dripping suds and clippings onto the concrete beneath his feet, severed yet another one of the strands that tied him to the person he thought he was, or hoped to continue being.
Marshall exhaled, but tensed when he saw the razor dip low again.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
When it was done, the man dropped the razor into the basin; it clattered against the porcelain. This small sound, so tiny and insignificant under any other circumstance, was loud and startling now. Marshall leapt in his confides, warm water dripping down his shaven face.
He sat there, panting. Fear bled away to expose a raw mess of confusion, like an open wound. What just happened, Marshall wondered? What did it mean? After being touched with such a controlled hand, he almost didn’t want to be left alone. And that shamed him.
Marshall watched the man pick up the tray and begin to walk away, only to stop at the foot of the stairs, his boots scrunching up the flag. He turned back to look at him.
The man spoke in deep monotone. “The shave was good. But next time I’ll use a broken bottle. I’ll come back to see you soon.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Joe Burnett sat at his dining room table wearing nothing but his mother’s World War II gas mask. Sunshine shone in through the window, highlighting the floating dust mites. A bowl of oats, a glass of orange juice and a deck of cards were laid out in front of him. Cutting a hand helped relieve tension; he found wearing the mask was therapeutic. He was edgy that morning.
Marline, Joe’s wife, was upstairs in her chair—but not her rocker though, he couldn’t chance her shifting and ending up on the floor. It made him sad—she used to love that old handcrafted beauty. Damn thing had good rhythm to it. A nice sway. They used to sit together on the front porch after a day of sweating, yapping like two old farts, drinking cranberry juice made straight from the vine. He didn’t have the plants anymore, frost got them in the end. He was sad to see it go, just like her chair.
Marline had been fed and changed but it had been a rough morning. Hence the cards. His wife had wet her pants during the night and had called out for him. God only knows how long she screamed.
Joe wasn’t home.
When he returned, he found her crying into her pillo
w. She’d been furious. And whatever anger coursed through Marline was amplified by the fact that she couldn’t vocalize how she felt anymore. She was reduced to grunts and biting, throwing her plastic sippy-cups like a spoiled toddler.
Guilt stung like a bitch but he didn’t back down; he refused to let her see how much the tantrum had upset him. He wanted to retaliate so bad, to throw her things around like they were nothing. But what was the point in echoing her incoherency? His answer lay in the question itself—there was no point in being mean. Marline didn’t deserve it.
So he bit his tongue and picked up the overturned sippy-cup, taking her scratches in stride. After all, he had been out all night.
But what Marline didn’t understand was that he had been out for her benefit. She defined his role in The Forgiveness.
His wife didn’t understand a lot of things.
Later, after the pigs had been tended to, he would go up and sit with her for a while and tell her that he was sorry and that he’d been too stubborn to realize it earlier. He would tell his wife of so many years that he was still very much in love with her.
Until then, he would sit and study his oats, breathing into the mask. The sound of the compressed air reminded him of his mother, and of how she had worn the same mask on the day the airplane crashed into the vacant lot behind their house. Pesticide had rained down over the yard, killing all of the grass and flowers. His mother told him that he couldn’t play near the lot without his face covered up.
Joe stood, took off the mask and felt vulnerable as soon as he placed it on the table. Everything seemed too real, his responsibilities too strong. There were times when this weight was so overwhelming he daydreamed of killing himself. Were he dead, he wouldn’t have to change his wife’s diapers.
He wouldn’t have to keep on hurting people. Innocent people.
(the scream of the young woman as they drove a nail gun into her vagina)
But if he killed himself, then all of the pain he’d caused would have been for nothing.
