Crossroads: An Anthology

by LaShaun, Elizabeth

  “I had to. If they find him here, they’ll kill all of us for sure. If we hide him in the closet, all they’ll do is take me and the boys back to Dirk,” she explained to Emily.

  “But, what about what you said he’d do to you? He threatened to hurt all of you,” said Emily.

  “I know. I don’t think he’s that much of a monster. Now hurry up and help me hide him in the closet before they find a way in,” Brenda pleaded.

  Emily quickly helped her drag Nash across the living room floor and over to the nearest closet.

  After they’d secured Nash’s unconscious body in the closet, Emily was the first to turn around. Her mouth hung open in shock and all the color drained from her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Brenda asked, afraid to know what was behind her.

  Emily didn’t answer so she turned around slowly, her body trembling without even knowing what was wrong. She gasped when her own eyes saw what had spooked the soul right out of her mother-in-law.

  Somehow, Grendel had got in through the backdoor of the house without them hearing. Somehow, he had managed to bring Brenda’s sons inside quietly as well. He stood in the living room, holding Demetrius and Douglas’ hands. Both boys were visibly confused but sensible enough to remain silent.

  “Go to Mommy,” he told them as he let go of their little hands.

  His voice was absolutely terrifying. Demetrius and Douglas ran to their mother and hugged her tightly. She wanted to cry but held back her tears with all of the strength she could manage. She knew that the children were frightened and with good reason. She had to make sure that they felt safe, even though they weren’t. Grendel took his guns from their holsters and held them casually at his sides. Brenda was certain that they were all going to die when she saw the silencers attached to barrels of his gun. Her knees almost buckled.

  “Tell the boys to close their eyes now,” Grendel said. His voice seemed to make every vein in her body vibrate like the strings on a cello. Brenda knelt down and kissed both of her babies on their cheeks. She closed their eyes with her own hands as she touched their precious faces for what she believed was the last time.

  “Now, don’t open your eyes until I tell you,” she told her sons. Brenda silently made her peace with God and waited for Grendel to raise his guns to take her life. Then, she heard the most sickening sound she had ever heard in her life. There were no words that she could find to describe it but as she looked beside her, she saw what it was.

  Tears flowed freely from Emily’s eyes while a feminine hand covered her mouth to muffle her screams. Her beautiful blue eyes were opened wide and bulging in their sockets. They seemed to fade as Gretchen forced the machete brutally though her body. Amplified a thousand times, Emily heard her insides being maimed. Brenda watched in horror, then screamed as the tip of the machete emerged from the front of Emily’s body.

  “He said to tell you that he knows that you’re the one who’s been helping her keep secrets,” Gretchen whispered in Emily’s ear as she began remove the blade, slowly, and sadistically. Right before the last light left her beautiful blue eyes, Emily’s tears became blood. It was the most horrible thing Brenda had ever witnessed. All she could do was keep her hand over her children’s eyes.

  “Why are you doing this?” Brenda sobbed.

  “WHY is a silly question to ask us. I’m sure you could answer your own question better than we could. We make it a point to never ask. We don’t know and we don’t care. We don’t have consciences because we’re just the weapons and the tools of the people who send us to do unpleasant things,” Grendel explained indifferently.

  “All over my dress, just like I said,” Gretchen complained as she let Emily’s body fall to the ground in a mangled heap.

  Her white dress was stained with crimson. Brenda felt trapped in a horror movie. Gretchen stared at her with her green eye but it was the cloudy, white one that nearly stopped Brenda’s heart from pumping. Blood from the machete trickled down the blade and dripped onto the floor as Gretchen held it at her side. Brenda didn’t want to die but if she was about to, she hoped that Grendel would just shoot her as opposed to getting hacked to pieces by the woman in the bloody white dress.

  “There was supposed to be a man here too. Where is he?” Grendel asked.

  “He was supposed to meet me here but he never showed up,” she lied.

  Even if she was about to be killed, she had no desire to see anyone else slaughtered in front of her. She felt responsible for bringing this calamity into Emily’s life. She hoped that maybe saving Nash might wash some of the sin off of her soul.

  “Cowardly that he didn’t show up but, smart I guess,” said Gretchen.

  “Take them to the car while I finish up in here,” Grendel told her.

  “Ok, but hurry up. I want to get out of these clothes,” she answered, winking at him with her healthy green eye.

  “I’ll help you with that,” he said, licking his lips.

  Gretchen took Brenda by the arm and began to lead her out of the house with the children in tow. Her skin crawled when she saw that Gretchen’s filthy hands had smeared poor Emily’s blood all over her arm. She was sickened by what she had just witnessed but also relieved to still be alive. Gretchen dragged them outside to the car. She didn’t know what was going to happen next but she knew that she would do whatever it took for her sons to survive this ordeal. As they were forced into the car, Brenda began to pray and hope that someone, anyone, was listening.

  ***

  Grendel looked down at Emily’s body and sighed. A pool of blood had formed underneath it. He’d always felt that Gretchen was too messy. As he began to drag the body over to the couch, he told himself that he would have given the woman a much cleaner death. After he’d propped her up on the couch as if she had been sitting there all along, he took one of the cigarettes from the coffee table. He put it between his lips and lit it with a wooden match from his pocket.

  “Horrible brand,” he said to Emily’s dead body before he spit the lit cigarette onto the floor. A black flask of alcohol from his pocket provided the fuel to assist the tiny flame grow into a mighty blaze. He watched solemnly as it grew and spread across the floor until it became an inferno.

  “I’m sure we’ll meet again,” he said to Emily’s lifeless body as if he expected her to answer.

  He kissed her cold lips as the inferno that he had started engulfed the entire room. Her beautiful blue eyes were still open, staring off into nothingness. He lowered her eyelids for the last time with his fingers.

  ***

  As the house burst into flames, Grendel walked out through the front door calmly, his clothes still smoking. He didn’t look back as he walked down the crumbling brick stairs and passed through the little black gate.

  “Let’s leave this place,” he told Gretchen as he climbed into the passenger seat of the ’69 Chevy Impala.

  He shook his head in disbelief when he saw that Gretchen had inadvertently smeared blood all over the white steering wheel.

  PART 10 – Inferno

  Nash lay flat on his stomach on the grass in the backyard. He nearly hacked up his lungs which were scorched from the black smoke he had just escaped by way of a miracle or more likely, divine intervention. His head was still reeling and he wanted to vomit. He couldn’t block out the image of Emily’s body burning on her couch. Brenda and the children weren’t outside and he could only pray that they had escaped the flames. Tears streamed down his soot-covered face as he realized that they might be burning to death inside. In the distance, he could hear the wailing of the fire engine’s sirens. With every bit of strength he had left, he forced himself to crawl to the fence that led to the neighbor’s yard and climbed over. There would be too many questions that he couldn’t even begin to answer if he stayed.

  ***

  Dirk sat on the steps of his home with his two personal assistants standing watch like pillars on either side of him. His tie was loose around his collar and he looked disheveled, as if
he had just got home from a hard day’s work at the office. Even in the failing light of the setting sun, you could see that his bright blue pupils were surrounded by redness. He had been estranged from his mother longer than he remembered but, once he had given the order that would ultimately end her life; he felt a doom casting a shadow on his life. He had wept just as he had when he had lost his beloved father, all those years ago. He hadn’t imagined that he would have felt anything at all but he mourned her. For years he told himself that he hated her. He felt cheated by the huge white lie he had held onto for years which had now been made reality by his own hand. It was a crippling, painful truth. To finally prove to her that he did not inherit his father’s weakness, he had damned himself.

  Dirk lost track of time as he sat on the stairs with his head in his hands and a half-empty bottle of liquor at his feet. Most of its contents now coursed through his system. The rest of it would soon follow. Beside his other foot sat a black briefcase full of money. It was Grendel and Gretchen’s payment. Their services were not cheap. Dirk reached for the bottle and guzzled down its contents, ignoring the burning sensation in his throat. To his drunken eyes, the world seemed to sag and wane as if it was made of wax. He was certain that he’d lost his mind when he thought he saw his father’s ghost coming up from the main gate below towards him. He slurred apologies as his father’s apparition continued to cruise up the driveway until he realized that it was only the headlights of a candy red, vintage car. Grendel and Gretchen had arrived to make their delivery and collect their money. Sam and Simian walked down the stairs to meet the car once it came to a full stop.

  ***

  The boys both cried for their mother as Sam walked them inside the house, past their own father who dared not look into his children’s eyes for fear that they might see him for what he was. Brenda kicked, screamed and cursed as Simian dragged her out of the car. She only stopped fighting momentarily when she got to the steps where Dirk was sitting. She looked down at her husband in disgust and he looked up at her like a lost soul. Their eyes locked and she spat directly in his face. His expression remained the same and he made no effort to wipe away her spit. It ran slowly down his cheek and dripped from his chin. He waved his hand and Simian continued to drag her, kicking and screaming, into the house.

  Gretchen shook Grendel, who was slumped all the way back in the passenger seat, sound asleep. If his snoring wasn’t louder than the car’s engine, she would have thought he was dead. She muttered about having to do everything herself after driving all the way there and got out of the car, slamming the door as she did. He still didn’t stir from his deep slumber.

  Dirk was not prepared for what he was about to see. He quickly shut his eyes after seeing Gretchen walking towards him with her blood-stained hands and dress. To him, she looked like a demon and as she got closer, he covered his eyes with his hands. Gretchen found his behavior odd but, she had grown accustomed to all manner of eccentricities from the clients in her line of work. She shrugged it off and picked up the briefcase.

  “Did she suffer?” Dirk asked as Gretchen walked back to the car.

  He opened his eyes to watch her leave, almost to make sure he knew that this was all real.

  “What do you think?” she answered, showing him the gore on her hands and clothes as she walked backwards to her car. Without another word, she got behind the bloody steering wheel and drove away, leaving Dirk alone on the steps of his mansion, fighting for breath in a sea of regrets.

  ***

  “Did you count it?” Grendel asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He was surprised by how dark it was. When he had closed his eyes, it had been bright out.

  “Oh, so now you’re awake,” Gretchen answered.

  “Oh hush woman. Did you check it or not?” he asked again, this time slipping his hand between her thighs.

  “Do you really think he would play with our money?” Gretchen asked.

  “Of course not, you’re right,” he answered. He slipped his fingers into her panties and parted her second set of juicy lips.

  “You’re going to make me crash,” she moaned.

  “So pull over,” he told her.

  PART 11 – Purgatory

  Nash paced up and down his condo with a troubled mind. He was certain that he had barely escaped the scene of a crime. He strongly doubted that Emily’s house fire was an accident. His scorched lungs had him coughing violently and served as a constant reminder of Emily’s burning body on her own couch. He just thanked God for waking him before he was burned alive in some stranger’s closet. The gash at the back of his head was also a reminder that someone had tried to bash his skull in. Worse than anything else, he didn’t know if somewhere in that inferno lay the slain bodies of Brenda and the boys. He had barely escaped the flames himself. Then, the evening news came on the television and the story at the top of the hour was about a mysterious home fire. Nash grabbed the remote control and turned the volume all the way up.

  The news reported that Mrs. Emily Swan died when her house caught fire and burned to the ground as she slept. The authorities were still investigating the cause of the fire. When the news report was over, Nash clicked off the television and sat in the darkness. He was relieved and deeply troubled at the same time. The news didn’t report that anyone else had died in the fire which gave him hope. However, he still didn’t know what had become of Brenda and the children. He hacked and coughed in the dark. He knew that he should have gone to the hospital. Still, the physical pain that lingered was nothing compared to the anguish of simply not knowing. Sleep was something he knew would soon wickedly elude him until he found out exactly what had happened to them. The storm and turmoil inside him was too much to bear.

  All in one day, he had become a shade, trapped in-between life and death. Everything seemed to have less meaning than it used to but he wanted to go on, driven by his desire to see his son again. If Douglas was gone, there would be nothing left for him on this earth. That is how deeply Nash Tate had learned to love his son while being forced to watch him grow up from a distance. Now, he was trapped in a purgatory he had taken all of the proper steps to design himself.

  PART 12 – Dearly Departed

  Brenda hugged her babies tightly as she cowered in the dark of the closet in the boys’ bedroom while Sam and Simian stood watch outside. Both of her boys were tired, afraid and hungry. She continued to whisper quiet prayers as she listened to their tummies growl. She begged for mercy from the heavens because, at this point, she knew she would receive none from her husband. After all that she had seen, she had never been more terrified in her life. With every second that passed, she expected to see the platinum blonde with the one, green eye walk into the room and hack them all to pieces. When it happened, she would beg for mercy for her boys. Every minute that crawled by felt like a century. Not knowing how this was going to end was torture. Just as the anxiety of it all threatened to strip away her sanity, the closet doors opened and she knew that in the moments to follow, she was about to have her answer.

  ***

  At first, Dirk towered over them silently. The light that suddenly poured into the darkness of the closet caused her to squint. Mercifully, the children had fallen asleep. Her husband reached for her arm to help her up but she recoiled from his touch. She never wanted him to touch her ever again. He remained silent but answered instead with a sad smile as he stepped back to give her room to get up. One at a time, she put her precious sleeping boys into their beds and tucked them in. she kissed both of their foreheads and then turned to face her husband. For a few moments, there was an intense stare-down as they eyed each other like strangers. Dirk was the first to break the silence.

  “I suppose that’s it between us,” he said. He closed his eyes and sighed as if he was relieved.

  “After the things you’ve done? Yes, this is it between us,” she answered.

  “It couldn’t be avoided. This is who I am. I did warn you,” he reminded her.

  “I never thoug
ht you’d go this far. You’re a fucking animal!” she snarled.

  “But you knew that. Somewhere inside, you had to know that but you still pushed me. I didn’t want any of this. I practically begged you to not make me have to do this,” he said.

  “No, you fucking threatened,” she said.

  “Same thing, at least to me anyway. Now I have to do things that I never wanted to do,” he continued.

  “What do you mean? Your own mother is dead. You had her house burned to the ground with her in it! What more do you want? Isn’t that enough? You still want more blood?” she asked.

  “Not much more,” he answered.

  “So, you’re going to have us killed too?” she asked. She wanted nothing more than to break down in tears but defiantly refused to. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. If this was how it was going to be, she wasn’t even going to beg. There was a long silence between them before he spoke again.

  “Take Douglas and leave my house,” he ordered her. “I don’t care where you go as long as you’re not here.

  “But what about Demetrius?” she asked in disbelief.

  “My son stays with me,” he answered.

  “Oh God no!” she bawled. “He’s my child too. You can’t do this!”

  “Don’t bother to beg. My mind is made up,” he told her.

  “You’re casting us out like you did your mother?” she asked, barely able to find breath to speak.

  “No, this is nothing like that at all. I had always hoped that that woman would have found a way to redeem herself in my eyes. She never did. Instead, she betrayed me by helping you to keep secrets. Now, I want you and your son out of my sight so that I can pretend both of you are dead too. One day, this will all just seem like a bad dream to me,” he said, in a voice so pleasant that it took cold, calculating cruelty to new heights. Brenda was beside herself with grief.