Bad Games

by Jeff Menapace

  60

  Every last bind had been cut and Patrick was now free. He stared intently at the scene unfolding on the television screen, then ripped one of the knives from the dry wall. His adrenaline was at a fever pitch. His legs and arms shook. He studied the big knife clenched tight in his fist. The rage he was feeling was unparalleled, and nothing short of ramming the knife deep into Arty’s chest (repeatedly) would quench his thirst for vengeance.

  “Carrie, you follow behind Daddy quietly okay? Be as quiet as you can but stay close to me. When we get downstairs I’ll show you where to hide, but until we get down there I want you to stay close and be quiet. Can you do that?”

  Carrie nodded.

  “Good girl. Daddy’s going to go get Mommy and Caleb and then we’re going to go home.”

  “Are you going to hurt those bad men?”

  Patrick glanced down warily at his daughter. She stared back up at him, the numb demeanor now gone, her eyes momentarily suppressing their innocence. Those eyes allowed Patrick to tell the truth.

  “Yes.”

  Carrie’s face became angry and righteous. “Good,” she said.

  61

  Arty looked at his mother in disbelief. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  Maria Fannelli returned a bizarre look. “Mom? I don’t have any children, young man. And I’ll say it again: if that little boy is this woman’s son, then—”

  “Mom, stop it.”

  Maria frowned and snorted. “You can call me ‘mom’ all you like, but I can assure you; you’re not my son, mister. I’m unable to have children.”

  Arty started breathing heavily. “Mom, you’re having one of your spells. You’re confused. It’s me, Arthur. And I am your son. You have two sons actually. James and Arthur.”

  “One of my spells?”

  Arty felt his face grow hot. He looked at Amy, furious that she was witnessing this. His mother had gotten worse this past year, no question. But she had never forgotten Arty and Jim before. Never.

  “Yes, Mom, you have spells; you forget things.”

  Maria shifted in her recliner, the knife still to her throat. “That’s absurd. Where’s Sam? I want to see my husband.”

  Arty looked at Amy again. Her expression was one of interest. She could have easily gloated at Arty’s growing frustration over his mother’s dementia, but instead she seemed more curious than anything. This angered him all the same. He did not want his mother’s ailment to be the subject of her intrigue. He did not want her here at all. Arty could feel his uncanny ability to remain calm in the face of adversity waning.

  “Sam—my father—is dead, Mom. He passed away a long time ago.”

  Maria went to sit up, but Amy pulled her back down and kept the knife tight to her throat. “Don’t move,” she said.

  Maria tried to turn and make eye contact with Amy, but Amy would not allow it; she gripped the woman’s shoulder and pressed it back into the recliner, pinning her.

  “What is happening?!” Maria yelled. Her face came alive with panic. “Where is my husband?! Who are you people?!”

  “Mom, stop it!”

  “I am not your mother! I don’t have any children!”

  “Mom, you’re confused! You’re sick and you get confused!”

  “Where is Sam? I want my husband! SAM!!!”

  “Your husband is dead, Mom. He died over twenty years ago. You have a sickness that makes you forget thing—”

  “No!”

  “I’m your son. My name is Arthur, and I’m your son.”

  Maria Fannelli closed her eyes as if shutting out the world, refuting such wild claims.

  “Mom, please…” Arty’s voice finally cracked. His anchor had forgotten him.

  “Tough break, Arthur,” Amy said. “It sounds like she may need some medical attention…”

  “Mom…”

  “…and she’s not going to get it like this. Now—you let my family go, and I’ll let your mother go. After that, you can get her all the help she needs.”

  Arty hung his head. The gun arm fell to his side. His grip on Caleb’s neck and shoulders, however, remained—a queer means of support perhaps.

  His mother had forgotten him. In time her memory would likely return, but how soon until it happened again? And what if it never returned?

  Amy had mocked him just now by calling him Arthur. She was enjoying this. She was reveling in his worst nightmare. This was not right. He was the one who gave the nightmares. He and Jim. Not her. Not anyone.

  It was all coming apart. Jim was hurt badly, and his mother had forgotten him. His beloved anchor had told him she had no children. He couldn’t bear it. His stomach burned. That bitch was mocking him, loving his nightmare. Something had to be done.

  His mother would only get worse.

  (mocking him)

  She’ll only get worse.

  (mocking his pain)

  Worse…

  Arty lifted his head, his face stone. “She doesn’t need medical attention,” he said. “I’m going to take care of her just as I’ve always done.” Arty raised the gun, pointed it at his mother’s chest. “My mother will be with me until the day she dies.”

  He fired.

  62

  Patrick was on the very last step when he heard the gunshot. He flinched hard, and Carrie gripped his leg with the strength of a woman.

  Patrick heard a second shot, and he flinched even harder.

  “No,” he whispered. “Please, God, no.”

  63

  The explosion echoed throughout the room. Caleb screamed. A mist of red popped from Maria’s chest like a party favor.

  Amy didn’t realize she’d dropped the knife. She didn’t even hear it clatter to the floor once it left her hands. The sound of the gun was so loud, and the scene before her so shocking, that her senses had been altered—time distortion giving everything a slow, dream-like quality. For a brief, comforting moment, she even embraced the notion that the scene in front of her was a dream, and that she was now close to waking, to shaking the mist of images until they were nothing but a stain on her memory, time her ally in removing the bulk of that stain.

  She blinked; blinked again, and shook her head in tiny bursts. She wanted the images to disperse, for the mist to clear, for time to begin working on the stain. She wanted to wake next to Patrick in their bed back home. Wanted to tell Patrick about the horrible dream she’d had, and once that was done, she wanted to get out of bed and check on their children. Give each of them a silent kiss as they slept peacefully in their beds. She wanted to return to her room and slip back under the sheets and embrace her husband’s warm body, maybe even make love in the middle of the night. She wanted it so badly. If only Arty’s face would fade away. If only the strange house would dissolve to black, reappear as her giant ceiling fan in their bedroom back home, twirling and humming at a slow, hypnotic pace, its pleasant breeze caressing her face with security and comfort.

  Time distortion had allowed Amy to entertain these thoughts in the span of seconds. But even time distortion could not ultimately blind her to certain truths.

  Because Arty was not fading away.

  The now-dead woman sitting in the recliner before her was not dissolving.

  The house was not fading to black before reappearing as her ceiling fan with its comforting touch and reassuring hum.

  The house was real; its contents and horrific goings-on therein real too, more so, if such a notion was possible.

  Arty’s voice was the final slap that brought her back, and the moment Amy returned, she knew her inevitable fate.

  “I guess you lost your leverage,” Arty said.

  Amy took a step back from the recliner, held both hands up in front of her. “Wait, wait.”

  Arty shot Amy in the right side of her chest. She spun and dropped hard. Caleb screamed and cried out for his mother. Arty looked down at the boy, considered him, and finally said, “Aw hell, I’ll do you a favor.” He pointed the gun at Caleb’s head.

&n
bsp; 64

  The last thing Patrick could clearly remember was Arty pointing the gun at his son’s head. Rage blurred what happened next.

  Patrick dove at Arty with the impact of a train, Arty’s body nearly folding in half as they were launched across the room, Patrick stuck to him in a savage embrace. The gun flew from Arty’s grasp and slid to a halt beneath the family room’s coffee table.

  Patrick mounted Arty. A primal savagery took his tongue; obscenities were garbled sprays of spit and snot and fury as he rammed the blade into Arty’s chest, piercing him just below the collarbone.

  He brought the knife down a second and third time, each plunge more powerful than the last, each piercing Arty’s chest plate, squeaking as the blade was wrenched from blood and bone.

  Arty cried out, tried bucking Patrick off. It was futile. With wild eyes and a crazed delight, Patrick finally growled something coherent into Arty’s face.

  “You’re going fucking nowhere.”

  Patrick stabbed again and again, short, frenzied hacks in the same spot. He changed rhythm and raised the knife overhead, ready to plunge it deep into Arty’s neck, repeatedly if need be.

  A sound stopped him.

  It was a sound he knew well; the only sound in the world capable of penetrating the wrath that pounded the inner walls of his head. It was his wife’s voice, and she was calling for help.

  65

  Amy was conscious. The pain along the right side of her chest was like a deep burn. It was excruciatingly acute at the bullet’s entry, then radiated throughout the entire right side of her body. Her breathing was labored and her vision blurry, but she was still able to get to her feet using the back of the recliner as support. Once upright she spotted her son. He hadn’t moved from where she’d last seen him. His eyes were impossibly wide and fixed on something to his right. Something else was different. Arty was no longer behind him. Where was Arty, and what was her son looking at?

  Amy followed her son’s gaze and she saw.

  Patrick was free. He was free and mounted on top of Arty, driving a knife into their captor’s chest repeatedly.

  The sensation came back to her. The dreaming sensation. Was her husband really coming to her rescue?

  She had to speak. It was the only way to break through her haze and establish some form of solidarity to the moment. If she called out, heard her own voice, and her husband responded, she would know it was real.

  Her first attempt came out as a cough. Her second, a whisper. Her third was a weak shout that made Caleb turn but did nothing to penetrate Patrick’s deaf rage. Her fourth shout was as loud as she could manage and it made her husband stop.

  Patrick’s head turned whip-quick in Amy’s direction. His manner, the scene, Patrick appeared a ravenous animal startled from its meal. His good eye was huge and bulging. His mouth hung open in a deep pant like a wild dog’s, chest heaving with each breath. His skin tone was pale, heightening the contrast of wet red that flecked his face and neck.

  She had his full attention, but Amy called his name a fifth time in an attempt to bring her husband all the way back—she needed this savage to vanish, her lucid protector to emerge. She needed help. Amy could feel herself fading.

  66

  Patrick turned towards his wife. He knew she’d been shot, and he’d feared the worst. When he saw her upright and calling to him, his rage became something controlled by a switch—the animal was instantly gone, and he started sobbing with relief.

  Patrick pushed off Arty’s bloodied chest and jumped to his feet, Arty’s limp body rocking beneath Patrick’s weight before it settled motionless. Caleb was already attached to his mother’s leg, weeping and refusing to let go. Carrie was still hiding.

  “Baby,” Patrick said, taking his wife into his arms. She cringed when he touched her and he instantly checked her wound. “How bad is it? Can you hold on?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled and coughed out another cry. He went to kiss her but stopped short. A frightening realization sunk deep into the pit of his belly. In his lust for vengeance, and now basking in the ecstasy of salvation, Patrick had overlooked a glaring truth.

  Two.

  One was dead, but there were two of them. Where was the other one? Where was Jim?

  “The other one,” he blurted. “Where’s the other one?”

  Amy looked as though she didn’t understand.

  “The other one, Amy! Jim! Where’s Jim?! Where’s—”

  She gripped his arm tight. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” She moved her hand from his arm to his battered face, caressed it. “He’s upstairs. He’s hurt badly. Don’t worry…it’s okay.”

  Of course. Of course he was out of commission. How else would Amy have managed to come downstairs on her own?

  Patrick wanted details. He wanted to know how she’d done it, and if Jim was truly incapacitated. But his wife’s ragged breathing and crumpled posture buried those questions for a later date—

  (and there WILL be a later date, you motherfuckers, he found himself thinking for a quick second, and with more than a little triumph)

  —and forced him into action.

  “Okay, good,” he said. “Just hold on then, baby. I’m gonna get us to a hospital. Just hold on, okay?”

  She nodded, hunched over, clutching her chest. Blood was seeping through her fingers. With her free hand, she rubbed Caleb’s head at her waist then looked around the room.

  “Where’s Carrie?” she asked.

  Patrick was bent over Arty’s body, rifling through his pockets for car keys. He didn’t look up when he answered his wife. “She’s hiding. Carrie! It’s safe now, honey! You can come out!”

  Patrick resumed digging in Arty’s pockets, but was coming up with nothing. “Shit! I can’t find any keys.”

  Amy struggled for a breath and said, “Look around. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

  Patrick gave up on Arty and stood. His head went in all directions around the family room, scanning tabletops and any other flat surface where one might throw their car keys. He saw nothing.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said. “Jim. Maybe Jim has them.”

  Amy looked worried. “Don’t leave me, Patrick.”

  “Baby, he might have the only set of keys. We need them to get out of here.”

  Amy shook her head. “Do you even know where here is? Do you even know where the nearest hospital is?”

  She was right. In his haste, he had not thought things through clearly. He just wanted to distance his family from this place as quickly as possible. But his wife was right. Where the hell were they? And would they even know where to go once they left? They could not afford to drive around all night in Amy’s condition.

  “Call 911,” Amy said. “They can trace the call for the address if need be.”

  She was right again. He cursed himself for not considering it sooner. Patrick rushed across the room and snatched up the cordless phone resting on a small oval table.

  He started to punch the number nine and stopped. Carrie had appeared in the doorway of the family room. She was sobbing hysterically, but her tears meant nothing to Patrick—because his daughter’s face was also wet with blood.

  “Carrie!” he cried, dropping the phone to the floor, running to her. Patrick’s was inches from his daughter when she was suddenly yanked out of view, disappearing from the doorway. A powerful arm took his daughter’s place, and that arm drove a knife deep into Patrick’s stomach.

  Jim’s entire body came into view. His face was the delirious mask of a clown—a man bent on brutal carnage without losing his comic zest for the atrocities.

  Patrick thought he had been punched at first. When his stomach muscles started going into excruciating spasm, he realized something was very wrong. He looked down and saw the knife, buried up to the handle and sticking straight out of his lower abdomen.

  “Boo,” Jim said. He ripped the knife out of Patrick’s stomach and pulled back for a second stab. Except Patrick leapt
forward into him, jamming Jim’s movement before he could complete his thrust.

  Jim struggled to push him away, but Patrick clung to him as if their clothes were sewn together, his eyes fixated on something protruding from Jim’s face.

  Patrick clamped his teeth down onto Jim’s nose, jerked his head to one side, and bit the thing clean off.

  Jim screamed, dropped the knife, and clutched his wounded face.

  Patrick spat the nose on the floor, ducked down and scooped Jim up over his shoulder. Patrick spun, took a running start, then leapt into the air with his prey, the two landing on the family room floor with a brilliant boom.

  Patrick immediately straddled Jim’s chest and began hammering down punches. His wounded stomach cramped fiercely with the impact of each blow, but nothing short of a shotgun to the face was going to stop him.

  Patrick continued hammering away like a piston, the sounds a knuckles cracking flesh and bone like a butcher pulverizing meat. Jim was close to unconsciousness and groping blindly at his assailant above him. And when Patrick finally stood, there was a brief second where an onlooker might have thought Patrick was showing mercy on his foe.

  What he was doing, however, was trying to locate the coffee table, and the gun beneath it.

  Patrick kicked over the coffee table, revealing the discarded six-shooter. Gritting his teeth from the pain in his gut, he bent and seized the gun, walked back over to Jim, dropped one knee onto his chest, rammed the gun barrel into his mouth, and pulled the trigger until the muffled explosions became empty clicks.

  67

  Patrick and Amy were admitted to The Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh, some twenty odd miles from Crescent Lake. The doctor had initially tried to separate them, but Patrick’s glare changed his mind. They would be together, side by side as they healed, and never apart until they returned home.

  * * *