The Haunting of Ironwood

by Jeff DeGordick

  Katie could still hear the cursing downstairs when she got to the third floor. The fire alarm beeped incessantly and now there was the sound of jets of chemicals whooshing out of an extinguisher.

  The door stood in front of her. She stared at it for only a moment before she grabbed the doorknob and opened it.

  It was a closet. Just a normal, garden-variety linen closet. Three shelves inside, each stacked with folded towels. Boxes of tissues sat on the floor beneath.

  "What the..." Katie muttered.

  The last sounds of the fire extinguisher echoed up the stairs. Then there were footsteps, coming up.

  Katie batted away the towels and the boxes, looking for some kind of hidden door in the wall behind. She tried moving and shaking the shelves, but they didn't budge.

  Earl was already on the second floor. His feet were heavy and quick. She tensed up, knowing she was out of time. But she heard him march down the hallway below, heading for her bedroom. "Elizabeth!" he bellowed.

  "Come on!" Katie said to herself as she frantically looked the closet up and down. But there were no trapdoors in the floor, nor in the ceiling. There was nothing behind the shelves, either. It was just a normal closet. But she saw Earl walk out of it with her own two eyes. How?

  The footsteps were back down the hall, coming up the stairs to the third floor now.

  Katie's heart seized. She was out of time.

  "Elizabeth..." Earl rasped. "Where are you hiding?"

  In desperation, she patted her hand all around the inside of the door frame and her fingers felt something. It was a button. She pushed it and the whole back of the closet plus the shelves swung back into a dark cavity.

  Earl reached the top of the stairs and walked around the banister, allowing him to see the entire length of the hallway. The very moment before, the closet door had quietly shut out of his view.

  Katie found herself in a dark, cramped space. There were no windows and only the tiniest remnants of light that allowed her to not completely fumble in the dark remained. She didn't even think that she might need a flashlight.

  Heavy footsteps reverberated near her. He wasn't pausing his search at all. She knew she couldn't waste any time.

  She held her arms in front of her so she didn't run into anything. The space wasn't big enough for her to stand up, so she moved in a crouch. She felt a wall in front of her, and the path extended to the right. She took it.

  Katie extended her foot, but the floor wasn't there to meet it. She lost her balance and stumbled down a short set of stairs, crashing into a wall. Knowing her location was already revealed, she scrambled, rounding a tight corner as the stairs continued to head down.

  She could see light from somewhere below. The rough ironwood was visible to her now. In the light, bundles of thin red and yellow wires ran along the walls and ceilings all throughout the hidden space, some of the individual wires running off in various directions, and all of them leading upward in the other direction where she'd come from.

  These must have been for the cameras and audio equipment he had installed all over the house, she thought.

  Descending more and more, Katie almost thought she could detect the scent of summer flowers. It was like her lungs were opening up for the first time and taking in air. Earl's footsteps were somewhere above her, but they were muffled now, and she couldn't afford to think about them.

  The stairs ended and now she was in a crawlspace no taller than three feet. Katie had to get down on her hands and knees and crawl like she was in one of those big vents people crawled through in action movies. As soon as she did, she saw it at the other end of the short tunnel: it opened up into a bigger space on the other side, and there was a door leading outside to freedom. The door was open.

  Katie could see it gently swaying in the peaceful summer breeze. She could smell the air distinctly now. It was so sweet to her it reminded her of her childhood.

  I'm coming! she thought.

  Tears fell from her face and stained the dusty wood of the cramped box she found herself in. She was almost there. Just another foot or two...

  But why did he leave the door open?

  Immediately after the thought, a small shutter fell down from a gap in the wood and sealed her exit from the tunnel. The shutter was a wooden frame fitted with chicken wire in the middle.

  "What!" Katie blurted. She grabbed at the wire and shook the shutter, but it wouldn't pull back up. It was somehow locked into place. She managed to scrunch her body up enough to turn herself around and head back the other way. Before she could get out, another shutter slid closed and cut off the way back. She banged on the frame. "Get me out of here!"

  "Elizabeth, Elizabeth..."

  The voice came from behind her. She turned and searched around. A small hole was cut away in the wood near the edge of the tunnel, with a dark lens lurking in its shadow.

  "I had such hope for you," Earl said over a nearby speaker. "But it seems I haven't tamed your wild spirit yet."

  Katie grabbed onto the chicken wire as she stared at the open door a few feet in front of her. "Just let me go. Please." Her head sank down, and as she sobbed the wood beneath her face became a damp mess.

  "I knew you would try to escape," he continued calmly. "It was only a matter of time. I didn't want to do this, but you left me no other choice. Let this be a lesson to you so that you will never attempt to do this again."

  Then Earl fell silent and Katie picked her head up, a brand new fear in her heart. What was he going to do? She was alone in this cramped space, so what was it?

  A panel above her in the ceiling of the tunnel—unnoticed by her before—slid open. As Katie lay there, she felt a pile of something land on her back. It made her jump at the unexpectedness of it, but it only served to confuse her. It didn't cause her any pain. In fact, the force of whatever had been dumped on her had been quite light. And moving...

  Katie twisted her neck and saw a spider crawling along her hand. Then another one. Then a group of them running along the wood next to her arm. Then she felt them on the side of her face. All those tiny legs.

  She screamed and tossed around like she'd just been dunked in lava. The tunnel was closed off from both ends, trapping her inside with a thousand scurrying arachnids. In that moment, Katie discovered that there were fates worse than death.

  Open Sesame

  The air reeked of a smell that wasn't entirely familiar to her. Her head was dizzy, her throat raw. Katie launched herself again and her back struck the wall, crushing more of the spiders. They were in her clothes, in her body, it seemed, inside her very organs, maybe. When she breathed she thought she could feel them crawling in and out of her mouth. They swam around in her eyes. Her skin prickled, every hair on her body standing on end.

  She rolled herself like someone had performed a judo throw on her. The remaining arachnids scurried in every possible direction. Her small wooden cage was covered in the slime of their innards. Katie screamed again and bucked herself into the wall.

  The shutter leading back into the house opened.

  When she saw it, Katie thrust into the open space beyond. She was weak now, on the border of unconsciousness. But she forced herself to go on. She dragged herself up the narrow stairs. Her hands and knees were red. She still felt the incessant crawling all over her body. Her lungs were like red-hot balloons. She moved deeper into the darkness, and at the same time her own inner light dimmed. It was all fuzzy now.

  She made a corner and continued up the steps. She was tired. She crawled and crawled and then the light switch flicked off.

  Katie collapsed and spilled out of the closet. Her torso lay in the third floor hallway of the house. And in front of her were two large boots. She used the last strength she had to look up.

  Earl stood over her, nothing but a fuzzy shadow to her.

  She blacked out.

  Her body was cold and sore. It was like she was observing herself from far away, but yet she couldn't see anything. All there was was the
blackness. It consumed her, covered her like so many tiny things crawling all over her. She felt them again.

  Katie sat up in a panic. She smacked her body all over, trying to get them off. When she got her wits about her, she realized there was nothing on her. She looked around. The space was familiar. It was the basement. The cement floor was hard on her body, her lower half dressed in a thin pair of black jeans and a worn set of striped socks. When she moved there was a rattle. That was because she was chained to the wall from the waist.

  She tugged at the chain that was fixed to a bracket in the wall next to the fuse box. She pried at the loop of it around her hips, but it was quite secure.

  Dejected, Katie sat on her knees and stared down. She had been so sure of her plan to escape, and now all hope was truly lost. Her old life before being taken prisoner seemed so far away that it must have been a past life. She didn't even know how long she had been trapped in this house; it could have been a year just as well as it could have been a couple weeks. Time slowed so much that it had to be urged just to crawl forward.

  Voices whispered next to Katie and she looked to see the chained door standing just a few feet away. The sight of it was still just as mysterious as the first time she laid eyes on it. She strained to hear what the voices were saying, but they were too quiet and muffled.

  Katie shifted on the floor and realized that she didn't remember putting on the clothes she now wore. The nightmare in the tunnel with the spiders was still so fresh in her mind, and she knew she should have been covered in their viscera, yet she was clean. She touched her cheek and found it was dry, her hands the same.

  That meant he had changed her. He'd undressed her, cleaned her, and changed her.

  Of what was the worse fate—her experience with the spiders or being stripped and touched and God knew what else by him—she wasn't sure.

  As if her thoughts summoned him, he came down the basement stairs. He stepped through the doorway to the area Katie was chained in and approached her.

  Katie's jaw strained like a tightrope wire. She kept her eyes on the floor as hatred burned in her soul.

  "You're awake," Earl said, stopping in front of her.

  The anger in Katie boiled over and her body shook.

  "I hope you know why I did what I did," he said.

  "Fuck you."

  Earl was taken aback. For a moment he was motionless, like he had never expected her to say something like that to him. Then he had his hand around her throat. He smacked her hard across the cheek.

  Katie let out a startled cry and recoiled, in just as much shock as he was.

  "Don't you ever say that to me again," Earl snarled. "This is the only time I'll tell you." He took his hand off her throat.

  Katie held a hand to her reddening cheek. All the anger and courage she'd built up was slapped out of her. And in its place was that old friend called fear that she knew so well. She wanted to crawl away and hide and curl up. She wanted to crawl into Josh's arms and let him tell her everything was going to be okay. Her now-ex whom she'd sworn off forever was the one thing she would trade everything in the world for. The sting of tears dotted the corners of her eyes.

  Earl cooed to her. He gently placed a finger under her chin, which she shook off. But he was insistent. "Easy now, it's okay. Everything's going to be all right, Katie."

  She looked up at him. "You called me Katie."

  He nodded. He sat down on one knee and looked her level in the eye. "I know it's hard. Change isn't going to happen overnight. But you'll come to find I'm a patient man. I see real potential in you, Katie."

  Katie sobbed. "I'm soooorry." She buried her face in her hands. "I didn't m-mean to be bad..."

  Earl embraced her. "I know you didn't, Elizabeth. Shh... it's okay now."

  She wiped her eyes. "Can I ask you something?"

  "Anything, Elizabeth."

  "What's in there?"

  Earl's gaze swiveled and he realized she was looking at the chained door. "In there?"

  She nodded.

  "Well... let me show you."

  He stood and walked to the door. He retrieved a key from his pocket and unfastened the padlock securing the chains on their hooks. Carefully, he withdrew the long chain out of the many hooks bolted to either side of the door. He gingerly wrapped the chain around his hand and set it on the floor. Then, he stood to the side as he pulled down on the steel door handle and opened it.

  Katie screamed.

  Show and Tell

  Earl wheeled out the dolly. He set it upright in front of Katie. He stood beside it and grinned at her.

  Katie stared at it in horror. Her mouth fell open. "What... who..."

  Earl turned his head and looked at it. "This is my beautiful wife, Elizabeth."

  The mummified human corpse stood against the dolly. Its arms were at its sides like it had been resting for a very long time. Its skin was brown leather, the eye sockets empty. Long blonde hair flowed out of its scalp and the jaw hung open, showing two rows of grayish-brown teeth. Through the decomposition, the corpse's sex became less determinable, but it was distinctly female. On the third finger on its left hand was an engagement ring.

  Katie opened her mouth, but the urge to vomit overwhelmed her and she shut it. She worked through her revulsion, needing to outright avert her eyes to keep herself from heaving. "You... really did have a wife?"

  "Yes," Earl said wistfully. As he stared at his beloved his soft smile faded to melancholy.

  Katie couldn't help herself and stole another glance. "Oh my God, you're sick! You kept her... her corpse?"

  Earl ignored her.

  Katie's head spun. She couldn't believe he would do such a thing. She already knew he was mentally unstable, but this was on a whole other level. "What happened to her?"

  Earl frowned. "She became sick. I tried to help her, but she wouldn't let me. And then she was gone." He stroked her leathery cheek.

  Something caught Katie's attention and distracted her. Those whispering voices she heard through the door: they were louder now, clearer. They played from somewhere in the corpse's room, which seemed to be a small, square storage room, no bigger than a few feet by a few feet. Next to where the corpse was stored upright on the dolly was a stack of milk crates. On top of them sat a strange device that looked somewhere between a small metal box and what the 1950s supposed a futuristic toaster might be like. It looked heavy, and there was a thick black plug stuck into the side of it that extended out of Katie's view.

  "Why?"

  "Why? Much as I loved her, she was always too stubborn for her own good."

  "No, I mean why do you keep the corpse of your wife in your house?! That's... that's... demented."

  "I could never be apart from her." Earl turned his gaze down on Katie. "And soon I'll be closer than ever."

  She saw the look in his eyes and what it implied. "No!" she shouted. Earl knelt down and tried to stroke her face, but she bucked away from him. "I'm not going to be your wife! She's never coming back! You can't do this to me!"

  The next thing she knew she was in a chokehold. She struggled, tried kicking her legs and flailing her arms about, but it did nothing. His arms clamped around her neck like a vice and then everything was going dark.

  Just before she passed out he let her go. Katie coughed violently and doubled over on the floor.

  "It's just a matter of time," Earl said. He wheeled Elizabeth's corpse back into the room.

  Before he shut the door, Katie heard the whispering voices. Their clarity waxed and waned. She only caught snippets.

  "...love me..."

  "...we'll always be..."

  "...for as long as I..."

  "...man you could ever dream..."

  The voices were chattering over each other. They sounded like they were all uttered in Earl's voice, but Katie didn't know if that was true or if that was her brain playing tricks on her after all of his subliminal brainwashing she'd been subjected to. They sounded like they were playing somewher
e around the strange box, but not from it. The box itself hummed steadily, the same noise she had heard through the door before.

  Earl shut the door and roped the chain through all the hooks. After securing the padlock, he turned. "Just a matter of time," he repeated, then he left.

  Ace up Her Sleeve

  The dark of night filled the basement. Cold shadows hung low like fog over a lake. They enveloped Katie as she rested against the cement wall. Her legs lay straight from her body on the hard floor. Her knees hurt. Her heels hurt. Her hips, too. She shifted again, but no position was comfortable. Earl had left her down there without any food or water. She had to go pee, but she didn't dare let herself do it lest Earl insist on cleaning her up again. Her head craned around and she gazed at the blackened basement, her eyes droopy, her throat dry. Her gaze fell on the chained door and she heard the whispers and the gentle hum of that strange device. And behind that steel door, not even a dozen feet away from her, she knew there was that corpse with its hollow, endlessly staring eyes. She shuddered at the realization that she had always been so close to it without even knowing.

  The hours and the minutes and the seconds ticked away, each one seemingly slower than the one preceding it. She heard the occasional noise from Earl above her, but more than anything she was left alone with nothing but her thoughts. And now she knew how people went mad. At first she tried to clear her mind, but the thoughts kept coming and gnawing on her from the dark like rats. Eventually she surrendered and let them flow through her. She was powerless to stop them anymore, just as she knew she was powerless to stop anything anymore. There were many brief breakouts of tears, sometimes uncontrollable sobs and panic attacks. And what made it even worse was a dimly glowing red light up in the corner, a constant reminder that he was watching her.

  After a long time had passed, something like sleep came over her. She was still awake, but her eyes were glazed over and her mind drifted away. She didn't consciously realize she was calling Josh's name over and over again as a bead of drool stretched out of the corner of her mouth. When she came to, she was greeted only by the same darkness and she cried.