by Aaron Dries
Anna was a yard or two from the entrance when she heard the rolling pin whistling through the air. She snapped around and saw Sam rushing forward, two faces screaming, each as grotesque as the other. Anna bent low, her movement driving out what little breath she still had. The pin thundered against the door. Anna scuttled sideways across the carpet with the same dexterous speed that had gotten her from the kitchen and back into the living room; and tripped her attacker. Sam fell to the floor with a grunt and Anna, the adrenaline driving through her, made for the stairs.
The words DEAD END, or NO ESCAPE didn’t run through her mind at all. As far as she was concerned, her one remaining motivation in life was to simply put as much distance between herself and her friend as possible.
My friend.
The concept stung. Betrayal, the twisting blade in her back.
But the hurt she felt only made her stronger and Anna pulled herself up the staircase with assurance. One hand grabbed the balustrade, the other against the wall. She climbed more like a spider up a drainpipe than a terrified schoolgirl up a staircase.
She refused to turn and look around, but she heard the cries of anguish. “Stop,” he yelled at her. “Don’t!”
Anna didn’t listen, she just grit her teeth and tried not to choke on her tears. The murk of the upper story engulfed her, but her eyes were sharp. An old woman sat in a rocking chair against the wall, regal and still, watching over the floor below. Anna collapsed at her feet, the world growing brighter.
“Help me!” she screamed.
It wasn’t until she heard her own instinctive cry that Anna realized just how much help she really needed. It wasn’t scorn or simple, male anger that was chasing her, rolling pin in hand…it was far worse than that. She couldn’t name it because the vocabulary of her existence had never lighted upon the appropriate word—it had no relevance to her. Anna had seen darkness in her life, but she was still young and naive enough to believe she would live forever.
Anna clutched at the woman’s knees and shook her legs. “Please!” she growled, more threatening than threatened. The whip-crack alcohol fog assaulted her with sudden violence. She vomited across the landing as though a hand had reached inside and torn out her innards.
The light above them flickered to life. Sam stood in his mask at the bottom of the stairs, his finger lingering over the switch. His chest heaved, the tiny iPod earbuds rattled at his collar like a necklace of bones.
Anna let go of the silent woman’s knees, her hands covered in clumps of septic grey flesh. She stared into the pickled eyes. The mouth a yawn, lips falling off. Anna fell backwards, sending the chair to rock. The corpse leaned forward and a helping of scalp —hair and all— slid away and slapped onto her thigh. It was ice cold and wet—the smell of it reminded her of the time the septic tank at the rear of her house had overflowed and flooded their yard. Her mother had cried that day, saying that nothing ever worked out for them.
Swamp. Fecal matter. The type of smells that drew flies. Emptied stomachs.
Anna didn’t know what to do or where to go. Her mind formed the words “Oh, God” but the rolling pin had cracked across her head before she had the chance to voice them. She tumbled to the floor, her face landing in a puddle of gelatin skin.
Noah stood there, panting, inhaling the scent of meat and ammonia. His eyes burned behind the mask.
He sensed movement in front of him and looked up. He saw his mother standing in front of her chair, the clothes she’d been buried in dangling off her withered body. Her hair floated around her head as though she were still under water. She studied him and snarled with pride.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The monkey-house reek of the basement was almost overbearing. Were Marshall to escape, the criminals convicted and the house salvaged, he couldn’t imagine the clean up team ever being able to scrub away the stench of slaughter. Of fear.
He’d spent the day studying the room, the outside sunlight drifting in through the window. There were cracks and scratches and scuffs everywhere—some of the gouges looked frighteningly similar to claw marks. He’d read about certain materials absorbing the sounds of their surroundings, like divots in a vinyl recording. The concept chilled him.
Put a needle to the mortar of these walls and listen to the screams.
His own would be among them.
There had been other sounds during the day. A telephone ringing off the hook; he had totaled a number of eleven missed calls.
Somebody hasn’t showed up for work. The concept was a small victory. It made him smile to think that somewhere in the rooms above, Napier lay dead. Marshall had never been the type of person to wish violence upon another human being, or to rejoice at the death of someone. When he read about the assassination of wanted terrorists he was often left in a moral grey zone, torn between what he thought was right and what he didn’t want to admit as justice. And yet here he sat, bound to his chair, smiling at the thought of Napier not being able to answer the phone because he was dead.
And just now, another sound. Footsteps above. Voices. A thump. It made his heart skip a beat, his wounds stung as though each cut were an inward pointing mouth, chewing deeper and deeper into his flesh.
His stomach churned, bowels dancing. As he had watched the rectangle of light from the window crawling across the room during the day, he’d felt the knowledge that tonight would be his last night brushing up against him.
Seething.
He could feel it in the air. It was in his bones, as real as real as the puddle of brown piss between his feet.
Tonight’s the night.
Something within was at riot with itself; the wriggle of expectation. Marshall had looked out that window and watched the shadows of the grass and somehow known that things were drawing to a close. Either he was going to escape or he was going to die. This fact was in every groan of the house, in every sigh of the ceiling mobiles as they swung at the ends of their strings. But it was also in the beat of those grass blades against the window, in the whispers between the moans. It was a graceful sound, like the mournful coo of a dove.
Yes, just maybe, there was the chance he might make it.
There wasn’t a word for what he felt, nor a rational explanation. But that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Marshall listened to the sounds growing closer to the door. He made himself grow strong. Energy filled his muscles, mocked by the ropes that bound them in place.
Every breath he took brought the sounds closer.
Come on. I’m ready.
The basement door flung open and the mobiles started to twirl. The dreamcatchers spun, spitting dust that seemed to gravitate towards the light bulb, which now eased from side to side. Shadows waltzed; the shards of stained glass glowed bright.
There’s a door open, somewhere. A window maybe.
Marshall watched, dread building, as Sam descended into the room dragging the body of a girl behind him. He’d harnessed her in a bed sheet, her bloodied head slamming against each stair.
Clump.
Clump.
It hurt to hear. Marshall shook his head. “Oh, Jesus no,” he said, voice catching in his throat. “Noah, no.”
A girl. A teenager. Her hands bundled up on her chest, the fingernails painted blue. Blonde hair. Her face eclipsed by blood.
It wasn’t just any girl. It was every girl he’d ever had a crush on at school. It was Claire. It was his mother. It was the Vietnamese woman with the potato-sack legs.
It was everyone he’d ever loved or felt sorry for.
“Noah, don’t do this,” he said. Marshall felt as though he’d been struck by lightning. Everything hurt. Nothing made sense. He’d been so confident. Tonight was going to be the night.
For better or worse, the night it would end.
And now it seemed that things were just beginning.
Sam had his back turned to Marshall at the bottom of the stairs. The girl rolled onto the floor, crumpling on top of the soiled American flag, he
r cheeks framed by the fork of Noah’s legs. The teenager twisted around to lock eyes with his father.
The mask. It stopped Marshall dead. He recognized the face and gagged. The skin looked jaundiced, riddled with burst capillaries. The mouth had been slit too wide, leaving Napier with a permanent smile so huge that Noah’s jaw jutted out.
He imagined what it must feel like to have the skin pressed against his own. Marshall didn’t want to think about it, but still, this insidious thought wouldn’t go away. He wondered if it was cold and clammy, if it reeked of blood and fat. Maybe it was hot under the skin. Did it smell, and if so, of what?
Behind the empty eye sockets something twitched in the dark. A spasm. It made Marshall’s stomach churn, spitting acid.
He’d underestimated the boy and all the damage that had come to define him. Whatever Sam Napier used to be was long gone—if it ever existed to begin with.
It’s a father’s duty to destroy his sons.
Napier’s acclamation rolled around in Marshall’s head. It seethed just as the eyes behind the mask were seething. Sam had been destroyed, broken. Even from the grave, Napier’s touch could be felt. The boy was a heartbreaking work of art crafted by a dead man.
“Noah,” Marshall said. “Who is that?”
“It’s Sally. She’s my sister.”
…His sister; Marshall didn’t even know the boy had one. He rifled through the memories of his conversations with Napier and came back empty handed.
“She died before I was born,” Noah said, bending down over the girl. He took her face in his hands and wiped the blood from her eyes, carving white through the red. Her mouth was open a fraction and Marshall could see her teeth, stained pink.
“But it’s okay, you know. She’s back now. Sally’s come home.” His voice was muffled by the skin. “She’s pretty, ain’t she?”
Marshall had to fight to remain calm and fight off hysterics. He sat upright in his chair and drew as much command into his posturing as he could, probing his vocal chords for the strongest note. He found it. “Noah. You can’t do this.”
“But I can,” he replied.
“Put her down.”
“No. We’ve got to be together, all of us.”
“Noah—” Louder now. “I’m your father and I’m telling you to let her go.”
“No.”
“Don’t make me tell you twice.”
“Dad, you’ll thank me later. Nobody said this was going to be easy.”
Marshall could feel his confidence drifting away. He closed his eyes and pictured it on a tide, reached out and snatched it back, keeping him afloat. “I won’t let you do this,” he growled. Marshall hadn’t spoken to anyone in such a tone since before his son died—he hadn’t needed to. It was a voice reserved for sons only, to be used by their fathers.
Noah dropped the girl’s head and stood up. He crossed the room, his hands fidgeting over his chest, toying with the iPod earbuds and opened the door to the second room. This was the second torture chamber that Marshall had been fortunate enough not to see. “What’re you doing?”
The boy disappeared from view and Marshall heard the rasp of chains.
And then silence, stretched out to its maximum length—the drone of dread.
“Noah?”
Marshall’s gaze leapt from the door to the girl. She lay in an ungainly heap on the floor.
Noah reappeared holding a length of chain with a clamp on the end. It resembled an ancient capture device, something medieval. It reminded Marshall of old Hammer horror films where innocent women were chained to dungeon walls, left to rot until torchlight danced over their skulls.
“Put that down.”
“Dad, would you just shut it?” Noah’s face changed, growing harsh. “Don’t talk to your father like that!” he snapped in a bizarre, effeminate voice.
It took Marshall a few seconds to realize at whom the boy’s outburst had been directed—Noah.
Marshall gulped. Two words wanted out, but he held them in—Oh shit.
Noah was still, the manacle swinging at the end of its chain. He swiveled around and stared up the staircase. His mother stood in the open basement door. She was still rotting away and would continue to do so until they were a family again. “Respect your elders,” she said, her black tongue slipping out and running over her lips. Her remaining maggot-filled breast had fallen off and lay splattered at her feet.
Marshall shivered. Watching the voice of a woman come out of the mouth of the teenage boy was bewildering. He had the sudden sense that he was again in way over his head.
The boy’s fucked up beyond comparison, beyond reach.
“Sorry, Mom,” Noah said, cowering. He hated the way she was looking down at him with those poached white eyes. There was no more disheartening an expression than the one painted on the face of a disapproving mother, it cut him to the quick.
“Now, you go and be one of the good guys, you hear? You lose the smart mouth and just stick to your chores,” Noah said in the woman’s voice.
Marshall watched him speak—the boy contorted his face into something unforgiving. It was a scowl that could silence the most disobedient of boys.
And then it changed back. Noah stood there, remembering where and who he was…what he held in his hand. The man had not only used the manacle on his special guests, but on him as well.
Snap—the clamp around his neck.
Clink—the end of the chain attached to the headboard of his bed. He’d spent many long nights in its grip.
Noah sighed. He had chores to do and he didn’t want his mother to get upset again—he understood why she was irritated. Rosemary Napier had been waiting for this day for a very long time.
Stop him! screamed the voice in Marshall’s mind. Don’t let him do it. He’ll kill the girl. Us. Everything—
The blood on the girl’s face glimmered in the amber light. It looked as though a swarm of fireflies had lit upon her features.
Noah bent over Sally, ready to fasten the manacle around her neck. He planned to attach the chain to the closest staircase banister. He couldn’t wait to hear the click of the lock snapping into place, the rattle of the chain when she woke up and realized that she was his. Each of these sounds—the click, the rattle, would be landmarks on the highway to happiness.
He was so close he could taste it. It was sweet. It was foreign.
Noah dropped to his knees. The concrete was cold through the fabric of his trousers.
“When you were five we took you to a night fair in Epping, not far from home.” Marshall spoke without drawing breath. “You won a little laser gun on one of the sideshows. You were happy.”
The clamp hovered in Noah’s hands, his fingers shaking. He looked at his father through the eyes of the mask; the skin was hot and clammy. He contemplated taking it off but thought better of it. Even though the performance was over and he didn’t have to act anymore—hiding his scars—he still liked wearing masks, just as The Man had liked to do when he went hunting. The Man had made him steal the two white masks, Joy and Sorrow from his drama class—wearing them freed him. Noah was more himself when hiding behind the face of someone else.
Marshall was almost at the point of giving up hope on the boy listening to him when he turned his back on the girl and locked eyes with him. Marshall knew the story couldn’t end where he’d left it.
“You loved that laser gun, Noah. You ran ’round, shooting stuff. It made that annoying buzzing sound that those kind of toys do.”
Noah could feel the toy in his hand instead of the blood-stained chain. He could hear the far away jingle of fairground music. A merry-go-round. Laughing children. The room filled with the buttery smell of hot popcorn.
Buzz-buzz went the gun.
“And you lagged behind a bit,” Marshall continued. “You, Mom and I, we were looking at some sideshow act. I don’t remember what—maybe it was the game where you throw Ping-Pong balls at the bowls, to score a goldfish. She always loved that one.”
<
br /> “It’s true,” Noah’s mother said from her position at the top of the stairs. She was wrapping her arms around herself.
“It’s true,” Noah said in the old woman’s voice. Marshall cringed. The boy’s face changed back, the scowl fading away and his eyes grew expectant, his innocence seeping through.
“But you lagged,” Marshall said. “And when we turned around there was this guy, this…man stepping up to you. He had a cigar in his hand. He was wearing a dirty-looking suit.”
Noah could smell the bitter smoke. Saw the burning head of the stogie as it drew closer and closer.
Marshall felt a sting of pain at the memory; he had repressed it for so long. It hurt to relive it, but it had to hurt if it was going to sound convincing. After all, pain was what he’d been brought here for.
“And this man, he just leaned over and pushed the end of the cigar against your arm—”
The stab of heat against Noah’s skin. He heard the sizzle of tender flesh. The pain stretched across the years to burn him once more.
Noah grabbed his forearm and shuffled forward, under the direct beam of the light bulb—away from the body of the girl.
He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt with a wince and watched the sear bloom. He gasped. A red welt the size of a nickel had formed. Evening wind blew through his ears, carrying with it the discordant pangs of the carnival. When he shuffled his feet he kicked up puffs of fairground dirt, his shoe nudging a half-eaten hot dog. There were tears in his eyes.
“I saw him do it,” Marshall continued, “And this fury just whipped into me. Your mom grabbed at me but I shrugged her off. You were screaming. I ran over and slugged this old guy in the mouth. He went down like a ton of bricks, my hand killing me. For a while there I never thought my knuckles would sit right.”
“What happened to the man? I, uhh…I don’t remember.”
“Nobody stopped to pick him up. His nose was bleeding.”
