by Aaron Dries
Noah saw fat drops of blood squirting into the dust, painting the cigarette butts and busted balloons.
“Why’d he do it, Dad? It stung so fucking bad.”
“Don’t say that word, Noah!” his mother snapped.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said, looking up with his hand still clutching his arm. He was trying to hold the pain in place. “Why’d he do it?”
Marshall clambered for a reason but couldn’t find one. He wondered if that was why he’d buried the memory so deep. Burning the boy made no sense; there was only malice in the act. The old man had wanted to see the child cry—it was that simple. Men could dream up any justification for why they tortured others, but at the sad and bitter end of it all, Marshall knew these men were torturers because they wanted to be.
“I don’t know.” Marshall was telling the truth.
Noah felt the weight of sorrow settling over him like an iron coat. There was so much he couldn’t remember and wanted to relearn. Some of the memories would be bad—like the one his Dad had just told him—but some would be good, too. With each story he was told, he grew more defined, the darkness shrinking away. Noah felt great love for his father in that moment. It was a love that he’d never expected to feel. It was powerful; it made him go weak at the knees. He wanted to hear more.
A crooked, hopeful smile wormed its way onto Noah’s face. He looked up, staring his father in the eyes and saw—
Fury.
Something inside Noah broke. It was just a new kind of pain in a world of pain.
Marshall stared at the boy with all of the hatred he could muster. He thought about all of the hurt that had been done to his family. It wasn’t hard to find. He thought about his son, the real Noah, and of all the horrible words that Napier had spat at him once a link of trust had been strung between the two of them.
Don’t do it, said that voice in the back of Marshall’s head. If you do it then you’re just as bad as him. As bad as Napier.
(I have to…)
Marshall looked at the boy and saw nothing but surprise. Innocent surprise. He felt the strength of the constraints tying him to the chair. Marshall closed his eyes and in his own private darkness, made his decision.
“I hate you, son,” he said. His tone was even and calm. But beneath all this there was only spite, and that spite was sharp. “You’re nothing but a fucking pussy-shit and I wish you’d died in your momma’s stomach just like your sister.”
Noah let go of his arm; the pain was no longer pinpointed into one spot. The cigar burn was spreading through his entire body. “…What?”
What?
The innocence of the question—haunting. But Marshall ushered his guilt aside. He’d gone too far to turn back now. Like a man who had struck a deer with his car, Marshall had no choice but to reverse back and put it out of its misery. He searched through his memories until he found the teddy bear that had been in Noah’s old room.
The dead button eyes. The stitched smile.
A USB stick falling, tumbling through the air.
The thumb drive in the computer. Marshall saw the transcript again, the manifesto of deceit that had slowly driven his eleven-year-old son to his death.
“I’m fucking serious, you cunt!” Marshall screamed, watching the boy flinch. “You’re a sad, sad attention-seeking pussy-shit! Just fucking overdose or stab yourself to death.”
Noah’s voice snapped and turned raw. Guttural. “Dad—stop…”
“It’s simple: we all hate you. You’re ugly. EVERYONE HATES YOU!” His face flushed red. “I HATE YOU.” Spittle landed on his chin. “I never liked you. It was all pretend. You’re just a fucking zombie. Fuck off and never speak to me again!”
“PLEASE, STOP!” Noah’s face was white. His lips red from where he had bitten them.
Marshall lowered his head, his eyes falling into shadow. He delivered the final blow. “You’re nothing. Nothing. You white-maggot.”
Noah clamped his hands over his ears and crouched over until his head almost touched his knees. Everything around him faded away until it was just his father, himself and the hot spotlight above.
“I’m going to hide in your closet and wait till you’re asleep and then I’m gonna jump out and scare the piss outta you, boy!” Marshall now spoke with a slight Southern drawl. He felt as though he were swelling, his muscles doubling in size. “And I’ll do it over and over unless you set me free.”
“N-no. No. I can’t—”
“You can and you fuckin’ will!”
“NO!” Screaming now.
“WHITE-MAGGOT!” Screaming back.
“Da-aaaaaaad—” Noah wailed. He wanted his mother so bad right now but he knew that if he turned around and looked for her, she would be gone. The doorway would be empty.
“Look at you holler!” Marshall spat. “Boy howdy, look at you cry, you little pussy-shit.” He wasn’t sickened by his outburst anymore. Fury was the mask he wore, granting him a revenge he’d denied himself for so long. “Now, undo these straps, Noah.”
The boy wreathed. His shoulders rolled as he fought the tears. He didn’t want to hear anymore—it hurt worse than any beating The Man had ever dealt out. Noah had been so close to experiencing the kind of happiness he saw on television, the kind that he’d acted out in drama class so many times.
So close.
He tried to block out his father’s torrent of abuse but he was weaker now. Some of it knifed through. The words pulled him back into the foul smelling semi-dark, knowing that he’d been shattered, crushed. Noah was sore in every limb.
His father’s song, a quiet melody from the opposite side of the room.
“‘And it breaks me, it breaks me, it breaks me to say,’” Marshall crooned. Each recited lyric was the jolt of a needle. Fear and pain bled away just as he had bled, he and all the others. “‘Time’s put the end in my Endsville, a steak in the heart of the USA.’” He needed to cough but he dared the itch away. Marshall almost had the boy where he—
(wanted)
—needed him. “‘’Cause this ain’t my home anymore …’”
Between each breath the room was thick with sounds. The inane mutterings of the house—the drain and floorboards. A whispered draught sending the mobiles into spirals. The scrape of a blade against concrete.
Noah glanced up. He’d never looked so young. The mask had fallen away and lay between his knees on the floor. His face was smeared with blood, stray hairs plastered to his cheeks.
“Dad!”
“‘No, this ain’t my home anymore.’”
Marshall saw his son falling through the air, arms outstretched, welcoming the model dinosaur that would snap his neck. His scuffed school shoes upside down in the atrium light; Claire had been taking him shopping for a new pair that day.
“D-Dad.” A gasp. “Why?”
Marshall himself was falling, only he would never hit the ground. No, he saw himself falling, tumbling on and on, shrinking down to a tiny spot. Into nothingness.
“NOW!” Marshall screamed.
Anna gripped the machete tight in both hands. Napier had left it just around the corner in the alcove under the stairs. She’d crawled over and snatched it up whilst Sam’s back was turned to her. The weapon was covered in dried ribbons of flesh.
Anna was surprised by how light it was. It all had been so easy. And bringing it down on her schoolmate’s neck was even easier. The Garland girls refused to allow themselves to be hurt by the same man twice.
The blade clomped through Noah’s shoulder—a foot deep—severing tendons and bones and stopping midway through the cushion of his lung.
The song Marshall had been singing lingered in the basement like ozone after a storm. He watched the boy look down at the machete sticking out of his chest. A slight, “What’s that doing there?” frown on his face, nothing more. It was a childlike expression.
Marshall’s mouth hung open. Spots danced over his vision. The voice in his head that had commented and encouraged for so long
was nowhere to be found, or heard. There was just empty silence: the nothingness he’d been falling into for four years.
“…Oh, God,” Marshall said as he watched the boy fall forward, landing on his side with a snort. The tip of the blade slammed against the concrete with a clang.
Anna’s face drained of color. Her blonde hair was stirred by a wind blowing through the house—on its breath was the damp fog, the smell of deadfall. She saw the blood on her hands—her blood—streaked with lines from where she’d held the machete’s taped handle.
“Go,” said the skinny, scarred man tied to the chair in front of her. His voice was a warm hand on her cheek telling her that she was not alone. “Go now! Call the police!”
She had to be told three times before the jumble of sounds came together and made sense to her.
Go. Call. Police.
Anna stumbled back against the stairs, racked by a shaking she couldn’t feel. She was numb all over. “Sam,” she said through clenched teeth, her tone tinged with the lyrical burn of regret. But then she remembered the way he’d chased her through the house and snapped her across the head with the rolling pin.
CRACK.
The way Sam had been wearing the face like a mask—
She remembered it all and spoke his name for the final time. “Sam.” There was no regret to be found this time.
Gasping, she dug through the pockets of her pants, searching and digging for her cell phone. It wasn’t there. She snapped her head upwards and saw the door at the top of the stairs; it was beginning to close in the breeze.
“NOW!” Marshall yelled. “Go now and then come back down for me. Please, girl! Now!”
Come on, Miss Garland, don’t you give in.
She grabbed latched on to the nearest step, sweat mingling with the blood still flowing from the gash in her hair. She wiped her face with her shoulder and pulled herself off the floor.
Go. Run. Police.
Anna stumbled up the stairs, leaving grimy hand smears on the unvarnished balustrade. Her footsteps were quick, hollow raps on the wooden planks.
Marshall watched her climb. He did not understand who he had become, or why.
The girl, so much stronger than he could ever hope to be, threw the door open before it had the chance to creak shut. The light bulb swung on the end of its wire, shadows and colored light swooned as it had done so many times down there in the basement. Cold air touched his lips.
He blinked. His eyes were burning. Marshall saw Noah—
(NO, not Noah. Noah was your son. This is not him. This is Sam.)
—Sam on the floor two meters from his feet.
The broken child looked up at the man he still believed to be his father. A pool of blood was swelling around his body. A red rose bloomed around the blade.
Christ on His cross watched from the shadows near the overturned mattress. The mobiles on the ceiling continued to twirl. The rings of barbed wire shimmered.
Marshall watched the boy’s lips part. A bubble of blood. His teeth red. Sam blinked, and when his eyes opened the pupils were stony.
“Dad,” he said.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The house was darker now that the sun had gone down, but there was light from somewhere—the living room perhaps. Anna tried to recall if one of the lamps had been switched on. She couldn’t remember. She didn’t want to. If she took the time to remember the room, with its walls covered in old photographs, the overstuffed furniture, the Bible…then she was also taking the time to remember the sound of footsteps rushing at her from behind, and how that sound had filled her with sudden panic. Turning around.
Seeing the boy with two faces.
No. Anna Garland didn’t want to remember any of that. If there was a lamp switched on in that room then it was on from before, and although she may not have noticed it the first time, she was grateful for its light now. Her eyes were keen and sharp, but they weren’t that good.
The hallway was full of rushing air. It tugged at her clothes. She had no idea where it was coming from. It felt good in a way—each gust shook off her lethargy, which she could sense creeping through the corridors of her brain, desperate to find her body. This creature had an eerie resemblance to her father.
Anna stepped towards the kitchen door and saw the back of the man nailed to its frame. Here, the skin dangled in smiles that sagged down to the cleft of his buttocks. She could see the definition of his shoulder blades, pointing outwards in an awkward angle from where they’d dislocated under the weight of his crucifixion.
You sick fucks, she thought, brimming with resentment. She hated Sam for dragging her into this blood-splattered horror show, and worse, for breaking her trust. She was glad that he was dead.
She shivered.
Dead.
Jesus Christ, I’m a murderer.
Her father was peering around a corner in the corridors of her mind. His face was broken open by a smile full of rotten teeth. The darkness began to wrap around her.
“No,” she said out loud. Anna crawled under the body, afraid she might vomit again. Her right elbow brushed against a stone-cold thigh. There was a smeared puddle of shit pooled between his legs, squishing under her fingers. She gagged but kept on moving, scouring the floor for the dim outline of her cell.
She made it through and collapsed onto her back. Anna began to cry. Syrupy blood began to cake on her cheeks. The corpse towered over her like a splayed, emancipated tree, so deformed and stricken, that she had to use her imagination to see its face. His teeth shone blue in the moonlight. They scared her the most.
I’m a murderer.
Anna wanted her mother. But she wanted her cell more.
Rolling over proved more difficult than she’d expected. The wound on her head fluttered, fresh blood shot out and dribbled down her nose, speckling the linoleum. She refused to give in.
My phone. Is. In here. It has. Got to be.
And if it wasn’t, she realized, if it was on the staircase below, or on the landing upstairs near the woman in the rocking chair, then dammit, she’d find the landline. And then it came to her in a blinding flash: Anna recalled knocking the landline to the floor when she bumped into a table near the living room staircase. She had left it spinning on the carpet at the end of its cord. Yes, she thought. Go now. Save yourself and that man downstairs.
Anna wondered how long he’d been down there for, strapped to that chair. She didn’t know if he knew it, but the man looked like a skeleton, the flesh rotting away. And when he breathed, she could hear sickness rattling around in him. His eyes were red with busted veins. When he had opened his mouth and told her to get help, she smelled pus and vomit—infection—from the other side of the room.
Is that what would have happened to me?
Anna imagined ropes around her limbs, cutting into her neck. She imagined a knife in her side, and worse, the wound being punched together with staples. She imagined being denied food or a place to go to the toilet.
Anna saw all this and was grateful that she had fought. That she’d found the machete behind the stairs.
Get up, Miss Garland. Get up and find that fucking phone. Now!
But before she did, she dared a final glance at the corpse in the doorway. She couldn’t help it.
The flayed skin on either side, pinned to the wood with rusty nails flapped in the wind like sails. The crushed chest plate. Two rows of glowing teeth. This was the last thing she ever saw.
Hands snapped around her ankles. She slid across the linoleum, too startled to scream. Her hand bumped against something small and cold—her cell phone, spinning out of reach.
Her father was in the dark with her, close to her ear and breathing fast, just like he used to when he came to visit her late at night when she young. This would happen on those nights when her mother was sleeping, sometimes with a cigarette dangling from her fingertips, ash on her uniform. And even though she couldn’t see it now, Anna could tell—just as she could tell before—that her father wa
s smiling.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Marshall wondered how long he’d been sitting there, waiting for the boy to die. Time had become an oil slick on the surface of the ocean, a matter without shape or definition—and yet still very dangerous. What may have been minutes could have been hours.
The boy’s eyes had lost their shine and his mouth had gone slack. His face was white, except for the thread of blood running out from between his lips.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
It sounded as though someone had dropped a bowling ball down the basement steps. Each crash bore through Marshall’s flesh, through his brain.
He rolled his eyes up from the now dead body on the floor to the blur bouncing closer and closer. Marshall watched the shape tumble onto the last step and roll to a stop. He saw eyes still blinking with shock amid the blonde hair.
Marshall jolted. He sensed a shadow in the room, could smell soil and sweat.
The upper half of the girl’s head lay on its side. Her jaw and neck were missing—it was just a simple, clean cut gushing blood, grey matter seeping out of her ears. Her eyes were locked on Marshall.
“No,” he said, matter-of-fact, as though what he was seeing couldn’t possibly be true. “No. No.”
The door creaked open all the way. A muddy boot crossed the threshold.
Marshall craned his neck, squinting, and saw the fat man standing in the doorway. He wore a butcher’s apron, splotched with blood—some marks were fresher than others—and no shirt underneath. The bulges of his hairy stomach spilled out the sides, glistening. Ham-hock arms were caked with dirt. He wore trousers of fine quality, trousers that he would only ever wear to church. His face was hidden behind a World War II gas mask. The fat man continued his descent into the room.
Marshall had no choice but to watch him approach, stopping to look at the girl’s head, tilting his own from side to side as though he were taking inventory of some insignificant object. The fat man then continued on, his boots slapping against the concrete. Stepping over Sam’s body.
