The Darkest Lullaby

by Jonathan Janz

  He put his arms around her. His tall, muscled body was warm, his size comforting in this wilderness.

  She pressed against him. “Is it always this cold?”

  “Give it a few weeks.”

  “Guess I don’t have a choice, huh?”

  He gave her a squeeze, drew away and before she knew what was happening, he hoisted her in his arms and carried her toward the open front door.

  Laughing, she said, “What, are we newlyweds again?”

  “The apartment didn’t count. This is our first real home.”

  If it doesn’t cave in on us, she thought.

  The interior was better, but not by much.

  The walls of the foyer were festooned with hideous skeins of torn wallpaper. Beneath the pink roses and faded damasked patterns were more flowers, more designs. To worsen matters, the ceiling had split open at some point and had been poorly repaired. The warped wooden planks underfoot confirmed the water damage.

  “It gets better,” Chris said, but he was staring up at the patched ceiling, his face plagued with apprehension.

  They entered the dining room. No water damage that she could see, no warped floorboards. No table either, but that would be remedied by tomorrow when the movers arrived. The day after that at the latest. She refused to entertain the possibility of it taking longer than that. Surely God wouldn’t be that cruel to her.

  A spider scuttled across the floor, its bulbous brown body the size of a Calamata olive.

  Eyeing it, Chris said, “The kitchen’s an eat-in, so I figured we’d use our table in there and buy a new one for here.”

  “With what money?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that.

  She reached out and peeled off a faded strip of wallpaper, burgundy and gold with a fleur-de-lis pattern that once might have looked regal.

  “Comes off easily enough,” he said.

  “You ever removed wallpaper?”

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “You?”

  She shook her head and moved through the room. “I’ve heard it’s an awful job.”

  “Can’t be that bad.”

  Ellie kept quiet. She opened the door and was assailed by a draught of sour air, a withering brew of spoiled milk and old must. She felt along the inner wall and thought, Please don’t let this be the—

  “Here’s the kitchen,” Chris said as a spill of jaundiced light flooded the room.

  It was old and it was ugly and it smelled as though the last occupants hadn’t bothered to clean out the fridge, which was the same drab green as the ancient stove. The cabinets were a murky brown that flirted with black, and the countertops were splotched with innumerable burns and scars.

  What a disaster.

  “The table could go over here,” he said, standing by a window. When she didn’t respond, he added, “Or somewhere else if you want.”

  “How about Malibu.”

  “Ellie—”

  “Is this place safe?”

  He groaned.

  “Holes in the ceilings, water damage everywhere—”

  “Just in the foyer, Ellie.”

  “—animals living in the walls—”

  “I had an inspector here.”

  “He must’ve been brave.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but rather than speaking he dropped his head and went out the back door.

  Ellie watched him go, and though she knew she should say something to stop him, make some sort of apology, she didn’t. She blew hair out of her eyes and sighed. He’d be back in a couple minutes. She could say she was sorry then.

  Unless he gets in the car and leaves your sorry ass out here, her sister told her.

  “Shut up, Katherine,” Ellie said and went upstairs.

  Ten minutes later Chris opened the bedroom door, the sleeping bag slung over his shoulder. “Ready to camp?”

  “Thanks for putting up with me,” she said.

  He shrugged. “We were on the road so long, I don’t blame you for being grouchy.”

  “Still…”

  “Carsickness gone?”

  “Mostly,” she said and eyed the bedroll. “You bring pillows?”

  “In the trunk,” he said. “I’ll get ‘em while you make yourself comfortable.”

  A corner of her mouth rose. “Who says I’m not comfortable?”

  Grinning, he went out.

  The heating was slow, but the temperature had grown bearable. She was anxious to explore the third floor, but her skin ached for a hot shower. Ellie left the bedroom, flipped on the bathroom light and saw the clawfoot tub.

  She reached into the curtainless shower, twisted on the water and began undressing. The water smelled of eggs, but the thought of rinsing her greasy hair made her dizzy with anticipation. She clenched her jaw, hooked her thumbs under the edges of her underwear and slid them off.

  She stuck an open palm under the shower spray and felt the warm water. She twisted the cold water lower until the shower began to steam. Taking care not to slip, she climbed over the edge of the tub, gasped as the hot spray assaulted her skin. She ducked under the showerhead, relishing the burning on her scalp, the exhilarating heat racing down her temples.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Open,” she said.

  Chris entered. He looked at her, startled, and said, “Oh, I bought a shower curtain before we left. It’s in the car.”

  “You’re not really wearing that.” She nodded at his belt buckle, a gift from his students. The word LENNY was stamped on it to commemorate their reading of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

  He glanced down at it. “Sexy, huh?”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Not the word I’d choose.”

  “I’ll get the curtain.”

  As he turned to leave, she said, “Chris.”

  He stared at her dumbly a moment. Then his expression began to change.

  “Join me?” Ellie asked.

  Chris unclasped the belt buckle.

  Chapter Two

  Sighing, Chris opened his eyes and checked the cell phone. Four-thirty in the morning. He wasn’t sleeping anymore and that was that.

  As cautiously as he could, he squirmed out of the sleeping bag, knelt and kissed his wife on the cheek. He hung there, breathing in the warm smell of her flesh.

  She stirred in her sleep, mumbled something unintelligible.

  When he pulled away the clouds broke for a moment, and a ghostly pool of moonlight illuminated her profile.

  Beautiful, he thought. Just beautiful.

  He often watched her sleep. Sometimes he worried she’d catch him and think him a pervert, claim he’d somehow violated her. He doubted he could explain just how lovely she was when she lay on her side, her brown eyes shut and her hair flowing behind her like ripples of dark water. Below, the exhilarating curve of her lower back and her perfect rear end.

  God, the sight of her made him ache. Sitting next to her in the gloom, he wondered again if he’d made a mistake.

  When he’d come to this place shortly after Aunt Lillith’s death, the idea of living here, of uprooting Ellie and the life they knew was the last thing on his mind. After he and the inspector made sure the house was still livable, he’d hired Doris Keller, a local real estate agent, to help him sell it. Land in this area, Doris explained, went for five thousand an acre. But estates of this size were rare nowadays, and as a result, they’d have to temper their expectations.

  Two million, then, was their asking price.

  No one bit.

  They reduced the land to a million-five.

  Meanwhile, the high school at which Chris taught cut wages. Their credit card bills swelled alarmingly. They downsized to one car, and soon they had to give up eating out, going to concerts. It was only in the budget if it was free.

  Then Ellie quit her job at the insurance agency.

  Chris couldn’t blame her, had actually expected it for a while. Her boss spoke to her, Ellie explained, like she was a prostitute. Had Chris not w
orried about getting arrested and losing their only source of income, he would have kicked the man’s teeth in.

  After eight months without an offer on the land, they dropped their price to a million.

  It was around that time he first mentioned the idea of moving to Indiana. He’d enjoyed growing up there, he told her. It was a good, wholesome place.

  “You’re joking,” was Ellie’s response.

  “Think about it,” he said.

  “I don’t want to,” she answered.

  Another month passed. Their rent unpaid. The calls from their creditors grew hostile.

  Chris asked Ellie about moving again, and though she didn’t dismiss him out of hand this time, the look on her face made him sick inside.

  You’re failing her, a voice in his head insisted. You’re a shitty provider. You two want kids? How the hell will you support them?

  “Think of all the money we’d save on rent,” he said one day as they sat brooding on the beach.

  She wouldn’t make eye contact, only stared at the sand as though a bleak, joyless future were projected on its beige contours.

  He sighed. “It’s really not that bad a place, Ellie.”

  “Then why hasn’t it sold?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a big piece of land.”

  “What if we lower the price?”

  “We’ve lowered it.”

  “Better than living on it.”

  That night on the phone, sitting in the bathroom with the fan on so Ellie wouldn’t hear him, he told the Realtor to sell it for half a million.

  “It won’t matter,” she said. Doris had been amiable the first few months of their correspondence. Now she sounded like a principal preparing to expel an unruly pupil.

  “What do you mean it won’t—“

  “No one’s going to buy it.”

  “When we put it on the market you said—“

  “I was wrong.”

  Running a hand through his hair, which had begun to thin over the past few months, he said, “Maybe if you add more pictures to the website, change the description a little.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the listing, Chris.”

  “Maybe we should get another Realtor.”

  She hung up.

  The next day he came home from work to find Ellie crying.

  Sitting beside her on the couch, he asked, “What happened?”

  “I took a pregnancy test.”

  He put hand on her back. “And?”

  “Another negative.”

  A sick coiling in his belly, the hand on her back going numb. Her face was wet with tears and snot, and he couldn’t think of anything to say. They’d been trying for more than a year now; what if it was him?

  She laughed without humor. “It’s not like we can afford a baby anyway, right?”

  A thickness in his throat. “It’ll happen, Ellie.”

  He held her while she wept. After a time she asked, “If we moved, what would we live on?”

  “I’ll get a job.”

  “Teaching?”

  “Or writing. Money goes a long way in Indiana,” he answered. “We’d only have utilities and food.”

  “And car insurance, and house insurance, and—“

  “Diapers.”

  She stared at him. The pridefulness had gone out of her face, replaced by a naked longing. For the first time he could see her considering it.

  “You should see the land, Ellie.”

  She averted her eyes. “The pictures make it look like the setting of a horror movie.”

  “Only because it’s isolated.” He stroked her hair. “It’s really quite lovely.”

  She nodded, the reservations plain in her face, but the possibilities there too.

  “You could be a stay-at-home mom,” he added and felt a twinge of guilt.

  A slow smile dawning.

  He kissed her and it lingered.

  That was late January.

  In February, he arrived home to find her humming and making dinner, the smell of basil thick in the air. On the table were freshly cut flowers and the glow of several candles.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  He noticed her outfit. Tight khaki slacks and a red shirt that clung to her breasts, a sharp contrast to the baggy clothes she’d worn since she quit her job. She approached and handed him a glass of wine.

  “What’s this for?” he asked.

  “Let’s give Indiana a try,” she said.

  Now, remembering her smile that day, a palpable sense of guilt grabbed hold of him. Chris forced himself to stand, his knees popping in the dark, and ambled over to his clothes. He put them on as quietly as he could, though the car keys jangled in his hip pocket. He grimaced and cast a quick glance at Ellie.

  Still asleep.

  Moving quickly, he went downstairs and out the back door.

  The wintry night air acted like a tonic on his frazzled nerves. Stiff blades of grass crunched under his shoes, a sound he found oddly soothing.

  He turned and regarded their new home. The clouds had dissipated, and in the gleaming ivory moonlight its façade didn’t seem so black. Dark, yes, but nothing like the forbidding death’s head that had greeted them at dusk. No wonder Ellie had been so hesitant.

  A rustling to his left cut off his thoughts. He turned and glimpsed a large shape moving into the forest.

  Unthinkingly, Chris took a step in that direction. Something in the creature’s gait had reminded him of Petey, the black Labrador retriever who’d been his companion for eight years until one terrible summer afternoon as Chris sat watching television there came the bone chilling sound of squealing breaks and the muted thump of metal on fur. When Chris went outside, Petey lay unmoving, his pink tongue lolling in a spreading lake of red.

  He brushed off the memory and waded into the tall weeds.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “You don’t need to run from me.”

  He stopped and heard breathing, harsh and rapid. Chris crept nearer. Soon a gigantic blue spruce filled his vision. Beneath it, something stirred.

  He paused, straining to distinguish the dark shape amidst the darker shadows, and as he did he heard a pitiful whimper. He was ten feet away when the dog raised its head and stared at him.

  “Hey, guy,” Chris said. He knelt and smiled, but the dog—a black lab, he noted with surprise—rose up as if to bolt if Chris came any closer.

  “Listen,” Chris said, “I know you’re scared.”

  Chris continued, emboldened by the animal’s stillness. “My parents used to make fun of me for talking to Petey—he was my dog once, and he looked a lot like you—but I knew he understood me.”

  He reached the prickly edges of the spruce branches, the dog a few feet away. He lowered to his hands and knees, crawled forward. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  As Chris extended his hand, the dog eyed him with barely restrained terror. The lab sniffed his palm, whined. Very slowly, Chris reached out, caressed the smooth black fur.

  It lunged at him, but before he could raise an arm to ward it off, he felt the warm tongue lap at his cheek. Laughing, Chris went over on his side and the dog came with him, licking his face as though it were the world’s most delicious treat.

  Moments later, Chris angled back toward the house, hoping the dog would follow him. It did, the lab’s large paws padding softly over the frosty earth.

  When they reached the driveway, Chris fished out the keys, opened the Camry door, and half-turned the ignition in order to check the time. The digital green numerals told him it wasn’t yet five in the morning. He sighed, his white breath pluming out the open door, and regarded the dog, who sat obediently on the gravel.

  “Wanna check out Ravana?” Chris asked.

  Before the words had finished, the lab bounded through the gap between Chris and the wheel, the muscular black haunches bumping Chris against the seat.

  Laughing, he said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Chapter Three

&n
bsp; When she awoke she didn’t know at first where she was. Instinctively, she reached behind her but Chris wasn’t there. She sat up but something restricted her movement. Bewildered, she batted and kicked at the warm, membranous barrier and didn’t remember the sleeping bag until her left hamstring tightened in a frightful cramp. Despite the pain, she pushed down the sleeping bag and scooted her way out.

  Ellie rolled over, reached back and massaged the back of her leg, but the knot of muscle only squeezed tighter. It felt like a judgment. Moaning now, she lay prostrate and babbled incoherent prayers for mercy.

  Slowly, the muscle relaxed, though Ellie remained very still so the cramp wouldn’t return.

  She opened her eyes and peered about the dark room.

  Her head ached. The cold, probably, plus the fact she was dehydrated. Travel often did that to her. She reached over, checked the time on her cell phone. 5:35, she saw.

  Ellie shivered. She couldn’t quite see her breath, but she suspected the temperature had dipped below sixty. Surely the furnace hadn’t failed. Had Chris even checked it?

  She paused, a bigger question stopping her.

  Where was Chris?

  She went into the hall and saw the bathroom was unoccupied too. Then where was he? The lights were off in the other bedrooms, which meant Chris was almost certainly downstairs.

  If he’s here at all.

  No way, she thought as she descended the steps. No way he’d leave her all alone on their first night here.

  Would he?

  A shudder coursed down her back. The silence folded around her like the arms of some cruel and implacable ghost. Barely suppressed terror whispering at the nape of her neck, she checked the living room, the kitchen, but the first floor appeared deserted as well.

  The basement?

  To hell with that, she thought.

  As she stood in the foyer, debating, an unfortunate cinematic memory arose: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Leatherface and his cannibalistic family, the maniacal laughing and the roaring chainsaw, the—

  Would you stop it for chrissakes?

  Struggling to corral her galloping heart, she listened for her husband.