Knock Knock

by S. P. Miskowski

  They had planned every step, but it was Marietta's idea, if it came down to that and anyone needed to know. Marietta had set things in motion. Beverly was happy to help by providing the bait, but it all came about because of Marietta, who somehow had the nerve to go to the memorial today straight-faced, nothing but an old friend to the dumbstruck parents. This part seemed heartless to Beverly, although if both women had deserted Ethel in her moment of grief, suspicions would have been aroused. She could see that. If Beverly didn't go, Marietta had to go.

  Who would say they were wrong? Well, most people, but most people didn't understand how bad the girl was.

  When they had decided, and Marietta had explained what she was going to do, it seemed simple. As it turned out, there was nothing simple about it. The girl was mauled and her face and throat were torn open. She had seizures, and then she lingered for two days in a coma. Beverly had feared that she would wake up and accuse them. Marietta said this wasn't the worst of their problems, but Beverly didn't completely understand why.

  "If it's living inside of Connie Sara, I think we're safe if it dies with her," Marietta had said. "But if it gets loose before she dies, that's what we've got to worry about."

  The whole business was a mess. It shouldn't have happened in the first place. Burt and Ethel should never have had a child. It was crazy, at their age, vain and reckless, and crazy. None of it should have happened.

  More than at any time since he died, Beverly wished Rex had been there when Connie Sara pulled her pranks. He would have stopped all the nonsense before it got going. If he'd caught the girl leaving dandelions on their doorstep or pouring trash on the lawn, he wouldn't have gone to see Ethel about it. He wouldn't put up with it, and he wouldn't set a trap and then lie about it. No sir. Right on the spot, that first time, he would've taken off his belt and done what the girl's father ought to have done. Then maybe all of this would have turned out better. One good hiding might have knocked out of her whatever was bad, before it got worse. Then there wouldn't be anyone to blame for anything.

  Again, though, if anyone was to blame, it was Burt and Ethel, but now that their daughter was dead Beverly was beginning to feel sorry for them. They seemed like they had been under a spell ever since Connie Sara was born. Ethel knew there was something wrong, but she wouldn't talk about it. She and Burt had tried to pretend the girl was special and smart, but they spent less time with friends and neighbors as the years passed. At home, just the three of them, they might be able to act like a family. Everyone else who visited the Sanders house knew the place was strange. Even Rex would have said they were weird.

  By now Rex would have pulled down all those tacky, hand-painted signs, Burt's drunken handiwork claiming the road, naming it for Connie Sara like a birthright. They were nothing but an eyesore.

  Idle dreaming, that was all she could handle at the moment. Rex was long gone. And now Ethel's only child, the only one she would ever have, was dead.

  Beverly had heard the gossip and the bad jokes: people wanted to get a look, to make sure the girl was really gone. Well, they were mostly superstitious hicks living up in the woods, pitiful kids and their beat-up young wives, out of work and living off their families. They wouldn't know what to expect at a formal gathering. The casket would be closed. She was sure of that. There wasn't a mortician anywhere who could have repaired the girl enough to make her presentable at the memorial.

  It was terrible, but it had to be done. Now Beverly could breathe easier. Now her daughter would be safe. Her neighbors and friends were safe, all because of what she and Marietta had done. That was something. That was the thing to remember.

  She finished wiping down the living room lamps. For a minute she stood still, breathing hard. Beads of perspiration trickled between her breasts. The white cotton blouse and black knit pants clung to her skin. She itched all over.

  Outside the living room window the first drops of a downpour plopped onto a row of premature tulips, forcing their stems flat in the cool air. It had rained hard that afternoon then let up completely. Now a second storm was rolling in.

  Beverly arched her back and listened to the plunk-plunk on the roof. She thought she heard raindrops hitting the back door, too. But there wasn't enough of a breeze yet, for that. She fanned herself by flapping the front of her blouse.

  At the end of the short hallway, past the turquoise bedroom on her left and a shapeless laundry nook full of odds and ends on her right, she studied the back door. No need to clean that. The wood paneling was in decent shape. A spyglass at eye-level afforded a narrow view of the back yard, with its Japanese maple and its catalpa, and on into the woods.

  Beverly was gazing through the spyglass when she heard tapping at the front door. She smoothed her blouse and went to the living room, expecting to find the rain-soaked Pastor Colquitt on her doorstep with a morbid replay of the day's memorial and a plea to attend his regular Sunday service. Such impromptu visits made Marietta's son Henry unpopular around town, especially among his neighbors on Connie Sara Way.

  Beverly looked out the glass and aluminum door. No one was there.

  Now she heard tapping at the back of the house. Tapping, louder than the plunk-plunk of raindrops. Knocking. Someone was clearly knocking on the back door. That damn girl, she thought, and then remembered that the damn girl was dead and gone.

  Beverly returned to the spyglass. With her fingers splayed, flat against the door, she leaned carefully forward. No sooner had her eye focused on the yard than she heard knocking at the front door again! It was ridiculous!

  The rain was starting to come down like mad. In this torrent, anyone dashing from one end of the house to the other, outside, would fall down; but there was no sign of anyone, no matter how fast Beverly charged from door to door.

  It had to be kids playing pranks, probably more of the Dempsey boys, some of the pathetic cousins from those little trailers up in the woods. They drank whiskey, all of them, and they played cards late into the night sometimes.

  She would look up into the woods and see the amber lights of kerosene lamps, because most of them didn't have electricity. There were five or six trailers and vans parked on one piece of land. The grownups kept pretty quiet except during hunting season, but the kids were bored. The kids got into trouble. Not like Connie Sara, just the usual kind of trouble, stealing cigarettes at Misty Mart. Dumb stuff.

  Beverly took a detour into the kitchen. She knelt on the checkerboard floor and opened a cabinet under the sink. She grabbed the first thing handy, a can of foaming cleanser. That would give them a surprise!

  She shook the can hard and strode toward the front door, ready for action. Then she looked up, and froze. The stimulated contents of the can crept out the nozzle like drool and ran down onto the carpet. She dropped the can.

  On the opposite side of the glass and aluminum door someone was watching her intently, facing the door, so close to the glass that Beverly couldn't make out any features, only the outline of a head, shoulders, and arms.

  "Hello?" She said.

  The person didn't answer or move.

  Beverly thought: Halloween pranks in the spring! Stupid kids!

  But she didn't laugh.

  "Is that Darrell Joe Dempsey?" She asked.

  "Rodney Junior?" She said. "You better answer me."

  Not a sound. She tried to move, but she couldn't force herself to go forward. She wanted to slam the wooden door shut against the security door and lock it, but she couldn't.

  Whoever it was grabbed the handle and shook it hard. The door made a tin, shuddering noise. Beverly thought it was coming off the hinges.

  She stayed frozen. As suddenly as the shaking had begun, it stopped. The figure outside let go of the handle, drew back, and spat a wad of phlegm at the glass. The mess stuck and dripped down leaving a slug trail.

  Startled by the smacking, fluid sound, Beverly lurched forward and slammed the front door over the glass and aluminum one. She slid the deadbolt into place. Immediatel
y she heard knocking at the back of the house again.

  She crept to the back door. The breath felt sharp in her chest. She flicked through a mental inventory of latches, bolts, and locks. She knew that all the window shutters were open but there was no way to secure them without going outside, and she was not going outside, not for anything. All her nerve had buckled when she heard that metallic rattle. She finally noticed the telephone on the kitchen wall, and dialed a number before she realized there was no tone. The line was dead.

  The knocking was gone. The rain was gone, too. Not like the storm had subsided, but like the sound of the world outside had been muffled or quilted over. As if the clouds overhead had hunkered down until they covered only the house. Nothing spoke or moved.

  Beverly's heart beat hard, and she swallowed dryly. She was listening with her whole body, stiff, aching. Faintly, she heard another sound: Scratching or scraping across the side of the house.

  She opened the bedroom door and looked in. Outside the narrow window near the ceiling, the only thing visible was a cluster of dark clouds. Rivulets of water coursed down the glass.

  Maybe it was over. Hope flickered inside her ribs and it hurt, like something broken trying to fly.

  She heard the scraping again. This time it seemed softer, more muffled. She crept to the living room and looked at the door, the ceiling, and the window.

  She turned toward the fireplace. And while she stared at the dry, cold center of brickwork, a thin stream of soot fell gently down, followed by another. With a scratching and grunting noise, something heaved its way down through the chimney, forcing out another quick stream of soot.

  Beverly couldn't close the flue without reaching her arm up inside the chimney. Instead she upended the coffee table and pushed it against the fireplace opening. She grabbed cushions and heaved them against the coffee table. Whatever was climbing down into her house through the chimney was making progress, and grunting with a gleeful lunacy. She pushed as hard as she could and slid the recliner over onto its side, behind the coffee table.

  She tossed every framed photo and lamp and cushion she could get her hands on into a pile on top of the recliner. If only she could block the fireplace long enough to get out the front door, and run for the car in the driveway.

  She shoved the sofa hard against the armchair and the TV set, and a disk in her lower back twisted. The pain shot through her left leg and kidneys. She heard herself whimper, and felt warm liquid soaking her black knit pants. The smell was sharp like bleach. She slipped and felt a crack at her wrist as she hit the floor. Searing pain cut across her arm.

  She looked up and watched helplessly as a foot, then a leg, thin as bone and coated in soot, thrust out of the chimney and braced on the edge of the upended coffee table. The foot was bare, with toes that tapered into square, blackened nails as thick as talons.

  Part Three

  Lydia

  Lydia had been making nice about the scenery for miles and she was sick of it. She gazed out the window of the Toyota at the same view she had studied for the past twenty minutes of the trip. Dark green, knotted walls of Western red cedar and hemlock trees lined both sides of the otherwise desolate road.

  For several miles before they reached this stretch of vegetation she had amused herself by reading misspelled signs out loud. A peeling, rundown pool hall advertised an upcoming "turment." A pizza joint that looked more like an abandoned abortion clinic identified itself as a "famly restaurnt." Some of the signs gave her a chill, but this little game at least took her mind off the number of American flags she had seen on the way down.

  They had long ago lost reception on the Seattle stations. Now there was nothing but religious talk shows and country music. At every dial stop, it seemed, some yokel was holding forth about the end of the world and how the next Democratic candidate would play a part in it. Lydia turned off the radio.

  Her husband Greg was driving at a steady clip and he was in one of his moods, jolly as hell and pumped up on juvenile energy. Nothing she told him would shut him up. Like a precocious kid Greg kept pointing out milestones he had heard about from friends. Lydia found all of them trivial and irritating: a billboard featuring Jesus catching a football, with a bible quote of the month in a bubble over his head; a rusted-out paper mill and its collapsed company logo; a "world famous" bait and tackle shop that had gone out of business.

  Lydia only cared about one milestone as they sped further and further away from it. An hour ago they had passed through Olympia and then quickly left behind anything she considered urban, civilized, or noteworthy. Now they were in the country, far from teashops, galleries, cafes, 24-hour Indian food, artists' studios and vintage clothing stores.

  "You can make this whatever you want it to be," Greg said in a voice as merry as a cartoon soundtrack.

  They both routinely mocked what they called "the chirpy lingo of wellness." These were mostly catch phrases their friends brought back from workshops and retreats: Yoga, meditation, healing minerals, shamanism, spirit guides, abundance, positive thinking, and living in the present. Ever since 9/11 the language had taken on an ever-greater urgency until now, seven years later, it was insufferable.

  One of their closest friends, a woman whose intelligence they had always respected, had made a pilgrimage to Ground Zero in 2003 to touch the dirt and say a healing prayer. She hadn't known anyone who died on 9/11, but she said the trip was the most spiritual quest of her life. She brought back a vial of debris and kept it on the mantel in her home on Queen Anne among her vacation mementos. It reminded Lydia of souvenir shops that sold tiny bottles of ash from Mount St. Helens.

  "Keep the woo-woo to yourself, okay?" Lydia told her husband, who pretended to pout.

  She was doubly irritated because earlier in the day she had broken her resolution and referred to yet another stranger as "fat." She had been doing this compulsively since the start of her second trimester. She caught herself looking around for people heavier than she was, to mock. She felt ashamed. Yet she couldn't seem to stop. And what did it prove? That she, a bit more than five months into gestation, was slimmer than an obese boy scout, a thyroid mom at a bus stop, or an alcoholic in Seward Park?

  Forest and clouds knitted together in the same pearl-gray shroud. It was late June and the sky kept shifting wildly, sliding back and forth on the scale between slate and silver. Clouds gathered and dispersed. Rain came and went with only a few minutes' warning. The landscape took on the desolate colors of the sky. In this part of the state nature looked green up close and far away, yet industrial and deserted from a middle distance. The hills overflowed with trees and emerald shrubs but if you looked more closely you could see blight everywhere, pollution creeping through it all like a trickling stream.

  Lydia was half-convinced that Greg was driving them to a remote place where no intelligent humans existed, a land where they would have their minds wiped clean. Then they would be stuck, unable to return. But why imagine? The reality was heinous enough. They were heading to a small town nowhere close to a beach. Buried in the scraps of forest, back roads, taverns, churches, and ditches of this non-world there was a place known to its almost certainly inbred residents as Skillute, Washington.

  Crazy as it sounded now, all of this had seemed lucky a few weeks earlier. Everything had happened so quickly and had clicked into place at the perfect, desperate moment.

  On bad days the whole world appeared to be coming apart at the seams. The game design studio where Greg had worked for six years had finally gone under, following three rounds of lay-offs in one year. The company president had tried and failed to sell off the business after the disastrous release of a game that wasn't ready for the market.

  With Lydia still working part-time in her first trimester, they had tried everything. She took as many copy editing assignments as she could handle, then developed migraines and had to stop. Greg applied for a new job at every small studio in the city. Then he applied at Microsoft, Wizards, ArenaNet and a dozen more compa
nies. Then he used all of his contacts and applied out of state: San Francisco, Baltimore, Austin, and Southern California. Some places weren't hiring and some were just impossible to get into as their owners tightened their belts and waited for further disasters to occur.

  They spent the condo down payment they had saved, to pay for rent and groceries, so they lost their chance at the only property they might have been able to afford in the city. They heard horror stories from friends who had settled for buying repossessed homes. For the time being, renting made more sense. So they hunkered down in their apartment.

  Greg's resume looked good. He always made it to the interview stage if there was an actual job available, but so did fifty other applicants. Most of these were ten years younger than Greg and willing to work for less pay. Maybe a sob story about expecting a child would have put him over the top in the '90s. Not now. On the few occasions when he mentioned Lydia's pregnancy, people looked at him as if they thought he was crazy.

  "Bad timing," their expression said. "What were you thinking?" That was the extent of the sympathy he encountered.

  Unemployed, running out of savings and medical benefits and the goodwill of friends who were only slightly better off, Greg and Lydia had received a letter from a law firm. They were convinced that the apartment manager had figured out Greg was unemployed and was trying to evict them on some previously unmentioned technicality. The thick envelope sat on the kitchen counter for two days before one of them had the nerve to open and read it. Then they were astonished.

  The letter explained that Lydia was inheriting a few thousand dollars in cash and a house on a small piece of land, courtesy of a woman she had never met, someone named Beverly Dempsey.

  Greg was ecstatic. He did a little end-zone dance on the living room rug, in the center of the apartment.

  "Don't you think it's strange?" Lydia asked.