What Lies Below

by Mark Lukens

  Girl P. nodded.

  “I want you to walk down the hall, go into her room, and then chop this ax down into her head. I want you to do it over and over again until you’re sure that she’s dead. You can do that, can’t you?”

  Again, Girl P nodded.

  Pam stifled a cry as she watched her eight year old self get up from the chair and walk towards the doorway with the ax in one hand. The camera followed her, closing in a little as she opened the door to a wide, brightly-lit hallway.

  Girl P walked down the hallway with the camera only ten feet behind her. She came to the first door on the right. She pushed the door open and entered the room. The room was much darker than the hallway, and it took a second or two for the camera to adjust to the difference in light. Even though it was murky in the room, there was a small light coming from a lamp on a desk at the other side of the room. In the middle of the room was what looked like a gurney on wheels, and a woman with dark hair laid on top of it. She looked like she was on her side, but Pam couldn’t be sure. A white sheet covered her body and her dark hair hid her face. She wasn’t moving. Passed out maybe. Or drugged.

  Girl P. didn’t waste any time. She didn’t hesitate or pause, she walked right up to the woman’s head which was pointed towards the door with her feet pointed towards the far wall—the exact opposite of the way a person would usually sleep, but positioned this way for the experiment so Girl P. could take ten steps inside the room and raise the ax and then bring it down as hard as she could into the woman’s head.

  Pam stifled another sob, and she had to look away. But she looked back at the TV screen, even though her vision was blurry with tears.

  Girl P. had done it; she had chopped the ax down into her own mother’s head. And she chopped again and again. The little girl on the screen didn’t yell in rage or even say anything; she only grunted with the effort of each swing of the ax.

  And then the girl was done.

  The camera zoomed in a little as the girl pulled the ax out of her mother’s head and walked out of the room. The camera followed the girl down the hall and back into the lab. She handed the ax to Carl and sat back down in the large leather chair. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “Good,” Carl purred. “You did very well.”

  Girl P. did not respond.

  Carl stood up with the handheld ax in his hand and walked towards the camera. He had a sly smile on his face. It was at this point that Pam realized there was something wrong with the ax.

  There was no blood on it.

  The camera followed Carl as he walked down the hall to the same room with her mother lying on the gurney. He flipped on the overhead lights and Pam saw that the room looked like a medical exam room. The woman on the gurney was in the middle of the room.

  Carl walked right towards the woman and pulled the white sheet back. But it wasn’t a woman on the bed—it was a mannequin with a head created from some kind of hard gelatin to mimic human flesh.

  The camera zoomed in on the mannequin’s head and Pam saw the deep slashes in the side of the head from the impact of the ax blade.

  The camera focused back on Dr. Carl Westbrook … her father. He smiled at the camera.

  “And it is proven. Under the right hypnotic state, and with certain triggers put in place, a person can be made to do anything. True mind control.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Pam felt a rage boiling inside of her as the VHS tape ended. There were no other videos on this tape.

  Why had her father done that to her? How many times had he hypnotized her?

  And what really happened to her mother? Were these hypnotic sessions just a trial run?

  Pam jumped to her feet. She was going to get some answers from her father somehow.

  She ejected the VHS tape with trembling fingers. She wanted to destroy the tape; smash it into small fragments with a

  (handheld ax)

  hammer so no one could ever see the atrocity she had been forced to commit.

  But that was irrational, and she had to think logically right now. She ejected the tape and then turned off the VCR/DVD combo and the TV. She collected the VHS tape and the other objects and stuffed them back into the wall safe. She shut the door and locked it back up. She slipped the gold key back inside the blue book of case studies and re-stacked the books on the shelf, not really sure if she had them in the right order, and not really caring. But at least she had the blue book of experimental psychiatric case studies roughly in the middle of the books the way it was before, and that was all that mattered.

  Experimental hypnotic sessions—what had been published in that blue book of her father’s had been tame compared to what she had just witnessed on the VHS tape. How many other experiments had he performed on her? How many gruesome experiments had her father subjected other patients to?

  Leonard’s words came back to her: There have always been rumors of strange experiments that your father performed over the years. People have talked.

  People around here suspected. They knew.

  Pam left the study and marched upstairs, trying to control her anger along the way.

  She checked in on Sarah who was just getting up out of bed. It was already nine thirty in the morning. She entered the room and gave her daughter a big hug as she fought to keep more tears from falling.

  “Is everything okay, Mom?”

  “I can’t just give my daughter a hug?” Pam said into her daughter’s shoulder.

  Pam pulled away and looked at her daughter. “Go on downstairs and get some breakfast.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to spend a little time with Grandpa.”

  “Okay.”

  Sarah still seemed a little groggy, but she headed downstairs.

  Pam met Maria as she was leaving her father’s room. Maria had some empty dishes cradled in her arms, and she looked a little surprised to see Pam.

  “Maria, how’s my father doing today? Is he alert?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He’s awake.”

  “I’d like to spend a little time alone with him right now.”

  “Of course,” Maria said and nodded.

  Pam wanted to ask Maria if she had seen any ghosts lately, but she didn’t want to get her mad at Rita.

  Maria walked down the hall and Pam entered her father’s massive bedroom. She closed the doors and thought about locking them, but she didn’t.

  Her father lay in bed, and he looked like a skeleton under a bedsheet. But today he was sitting up a little, his back nestled against an assortment of pillows that Pam was sure Maria had arranged for him. There were tubes sticking out of his pale, thin arms, and his face looked sunken and gray.

  Pam noticed an alertness in her father’s eyes. He saw her—he really saw her right now.

  “Dad,” she said as she walked towards the bed.

  “Pam. When … when did you get here?”

  “I’ve been here for a few days now.”

  Carl looked a little embarrassed. He was weak and helpless, two conditions that he feared the most. She could almost feel sorry for him, but she couldn’t allow herself to succumb to his manipulation.

  “Where’s Maria?” her father asked, looking around the cavernous room like he might suddenly spot her. “I don’t think she’s given me my pain medication yet.”

  “Dad, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “I’m hurting. The pain’s starting to come back again. Get Maria.”

  “I will. I promise. But first we’re going to talk.”

  “Is Sarah with you?” her father asked, like he was trying to change the subject.

  “Yes. You and Sarah were talking together the other day. You were whispering to her while you two sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the windows. Do you remember that?”

  Carl didn’t say anything.

  “She won’t tell me what you said to her.”

  He grinned at her, but it was only a slight upturn of one side of his mouth. “
It’s just a harmless game I play with her.”

  Pam didn’t think the game was so harmless, and she was going to make sure Sarah wasn’t alone with her father ever again.

  “I want to talk about Mom,” Pam said.

  Carl looked a little stunned, but Pam couldn’t help thinking that his expression was another fake expression that he had mastered over the years, one of the many that he could conjure at will.

  “You’ve seen your mother, then,” Carl finally said.

  “I want to talk about what happened to her. I want to talk about what really happened to her.”

  “By God,” Carl whispered and his smile had turned malevolent. “You really have seen her.”

  “What are you talking about? She’s not here.”

  “She’s here, alright. She’s come back to haunt me.”

  “Haunt you for what?” Pam spat out the words. She could feel the anger boiling up inside of her and she couldn’t control it. “What did you do to her?”

  Carl sat there in bed, sitting up against the pillows stacked against the massive wood headboard. He was a wasted version of the father she’d always known and feared. But she saw that same look in his piercing blue eyes, that same mischievous smile on his lips, that same air of superiority that drifted off of him like pheromones.

  “What did you do to her?!” Pam asked again, her words clipped. She felt her heart thudding in her chest, her breath caught in her throat. She never would’ve had the courage to talk to her father like this before. Not until now.

  “What did I do to her?” he asked, and it sounded like he was mocking her.

  “I saw the tape,” she told him. “I found the gold key in the blue book, the key to your wall safe. I watched the tape. I saw what you did to me.”

  If her father was shocked by this, he didn’t show it.

  “It’s not what I did to your mother,” he said in his low, soothing voice—the same voice she had heard on the VHS tape. “It’s what we did to her.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  A sudden memory flashed through Pam’s mind.

  She was in the basement and she was young again … eight years old—just like in the VHS tape …

  And then she was back in her father’s bedroom again. She was trying to fight the memories, but it was like holding back a mental dam that was about to burst at any moment.

  “Your memories are coming back,” her father said in his low voice. “Yes, Pam … just let them come.”

  Pam could feel the dam cracking in her mind.

  “You are going to relax now,” her father purred. “You are going to let these memories open up to you now. You are allowed to see them now, allowed to relive them, you are allowed to be there in the basement again.”

  Pam just stood there as a theater curtain opened up in her mind’s eye.

  “You are traveling back to those moments in the basement … I will begin counting backwards from ten. When I reach one and snap my fingers, you will be there again. You will see everything that happened, hear everything, smell everything. And you will not forget this time. These memories will now be a part of your conscious mind.”

  Pam’s vision was going dark around the edges, and she saw herself in the basement again.

  “Ten … nine … eight …”

  Pam was eight years old again.

  “… seven … six … five …”

  But she wasn’t alone in the basement—her father was with her.

  “… four … three … two …”

  And her mother was in the basement with them. But she was dead.

  “… one!”

  Carl snapped his fingers and Pam was transported back in time.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Eight year old Pam was crying as she stared down at her dead mother.

  Her mother had tripped on the basement steps and then tumbled down the stairs. She crashed down to the concrete floor and lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes were closed. Her neck and limbs were positioned at odd angles. Her neck had snapped when she had landed at the bottom of the steps, and now she was dead.

  And it had been Pam’s fault.

  She had left her Barbie dolls and some other toys on the steps, about six or eight steps down. Eight dolls and toys tucked against the wall of the steps, and her mother had never seen them. She wasn’t sure why she had been playing with her toys on the steps; she wasn’t sure why she had just left them there.

  But she had, and her mom had tripped on them. Her mother had been about to come down the steps into the basement. She was calling for Pam, but for some reason Pam wouldn’t answer her. Her mother flipped the switch for the light at the bottom of the basement steps, but it was burned out. She hurried down the steps and tripped on the dolls and toys. And now her mom was dead.

  Pam saw her father rushing down the steps from upstairs. He got to the bottom of the steps and she watched him check her mother’s pulse.

  “Is she … is she …” Pam couldn’t say the word as she sobbed and watched through her blurry, tear-streaked vision as her father walked towards her in the darkness.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, Pam.”

  “It was my fault. All my fault.”

  “No, honey,” her father said as he hugged her. She breathed in the scent of his cologne. “It was just an accident. A terrible, terrible accident.”

  Pam nodded and her father let her go.

  “And now we must do the right thing,” her father told her as he held onto her shoulders and looked her right in the eyes. “We need to bury her right away so she can go to Heaven.”

  Pam sniffled and wiped her eyes.

  “You want your mother to go to Heaven, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “We can bury her down here in the house. That way she will always be close to us.”

  Carl led Pam deeper into the basement after turning on an overhead fluorescent light. He walked to a far block wall that had a huge antique armoire against it. He pushed the heavy piece of furniture out of the way and revealed a hole in the wall where the blocks had been removed. The hole was big enough for a person to barely fit through.

  “We can put her in here and then she’ll go to Heaven.”

  Pam nodded as her father grabbed a white sheet. He brought the sheet with him to the bottom of the basement steps and wrapped her mother in it.

  “Get some flowers for her, sweetie.”

  Pam didn’t remember leaving the basement to get the flowers. Suddenly, the flowers were in her hands.

  And then time seemed to jump ahead again and her father had already stuffed her mother inside the hole in the wall. Pam could see a little bit of the white sheet inside the darkness.

  “Put the flowers in there with her,” Carl told her.

  She did as he told her to. She was crying again. She stepped back and watched her father go to work, spreading a layer of mortar on the bottom of the hole and laying down the first row of cinder blocks—the same ones that had been chiseled out of the wall.

  She wondered when her father had mixed up the mortar in the bucket. She hadn’t remembered him doing that. Just like she hadn’t remembered getting the flowers from the garden or the yard; it was like they were already in the basement.

  She watched her father stack the blocks back into the hole in the wall and smear more mortar on those blocks. And then it only seemed like a moment later that he was setting the last blocks in place.

  And then Pam heard a moaning sound coming from inside the wall.

  Her mother … she was still alive.

  “Dad …” Pam said. “Mom …” She pointed at the wall.

  Carl got up and pushed the heavy armoire back in place in front of the wall, the legs of the furniture screeching against the concrete floor as he moved it.

  Pam started sobbing again as Carl rushed over to her and placed his big hands on her little shoulders.

  “I’m going to help you forget this terrible accident, Pam. You will not remember any of this
until I command you to remember.”

  The moans from inside the wall were louder now. Were they screams? And was that a scratching sound? Fingernails scratching on rough block?

  “Ten … nine … eight … you will forget everything that happened here today … seven … six … five … your mother ran away. She left us alone. Abandoned us. Four … three … two … she is gone, but I love you and I will take care of you from now on. One!”

  A snap of his fingers.

  THIRTY

  And Pam was back in her father’s bedroom, staring at the emaciated monster who had buried her mother inside the wall.

  “She was still alive,” Pam whispered.

  Her father said nothing.

  Pam felt the tears slipping from her eyes and running down her face. She couldn’t stop the tears now.

  “You had it planned all along,” Pam told him. “The hole in the basement wall … it was already there with the blocks removed. You had the mortar ready, the sheet to wrap her in, the flowers …”

  “You’re just as guilty as I am,” Carl said.

  “No … you made me put those dolls and toys on the steps. You took the light bulb out so she wouldn’t see them there. You hypnotized me …”

  “You can believe what you want to,” Carl said and winced. “I’m in pain. So much pain. Get Maria.”

  “You … you sick bastard. I’m going to call the police. I’m going to expose you to the world.”

  “Go ahead and do it!” her father roared. The anger was etched in his sunken face. Pam backed up from the bed a few steps without realizing it.

  “I’ll be dead in a matter of weeks,” her father continued, “and you will make me a legend. I always wanted the world to know about my research, about what I could do with the human mind. And thanks to you, everyone will know.”

  “I … I can’t stay here anymore,” Pam said. She felt like she was going to throw up.

  “Go, then! Run away! You’re weak, Pam! You’ve always been so weak!”

  Pam ran for the double doors. She didn’t look back at her father as she fled into the hallway. All she could think about was getting Sarah and getting out of this house.