Minute Maids

by Rachel Caine

  Olida switched hers on and felt better for the butter-yellow light, but it made the dark look that much darker on the sides. She aimed the light along the wall on her left, then her right. She found the switch.

  The lights didn't work. She took a deep breath and started down the hall. Funny how there wasn't any noise. In most houses the air conditioner was blowing, and the refrigerator was humming, and the clocks ticking, all those noises, all the time.

  It was quiet as the grave, up here.

  There was a closed door three steps along the hall, and she turned the knob and opened it.

  It was empty. Just a carpet of --

  "What the hell is that?" Zenobia asked, leaning over Olida's shoulder. Olida elbowed her back. "Would you look at that. He must have one bad rat problem."

  Olida looked at it for a long time. Nothing but mousetraps, side by side, covering the whole floor. In the corner there were bigger traps, some kind of hunting traps with sawteeth. All empty, set, waiting.

  "Ain't for no rats," Rita-Mae said. Her voice was very soft, kind of childlike. The other two women looked at her. "Ain't no cheese in those traps."

  It took a few seconds for Olida to catch on, but when she did she felt sick and faint. Rita-Mae was shaking all over.

  Zenobia didn't say anything, but she didn't look so good either, in the backwash of light.

  "Let's go on," Olida said.

  Rita-Mae nodded. Maybe it was just the shudders.

  Zenobia went a little down the hall and stopped at another door. In the light of Olida's flashlight she looked pale like Rita-Mae. Olida wondered if she looked white, too. She remembered laying in her bed at night as a child, dreaming about going anywhere she wanted, any time. Dreaming about being white.

  She didn't want to die white like this.

  "Want me to look?" Zenobia asked. Olida nodded.

  "No, don't," Rita-Mae whispered. Zenobia swung the door open and shone the flashlight inside.

  "Bedroom," she said, and stepped back to let them see. This one had a big comfortable bed, made up, covered with a rainbow crocheted spread. On the dresser lay a man's watch and some change and a hairbrush. Everything was dusted and clean.

  His curtains were pulled shut, too. Zenobia walked over and opened them, tapped the window. She rolled her eyes and didn't say anything.

  Plastic, Olida knew.

  Rita-Mae looked less scared once she was in the room. She sat down on the bed, looked on the nightstands. Opened the drawers.

  "What you looking for?" Olida barked. The white woman flinched and almost dropped a picture she'd picked up.

  "The phone."

  "Well that ain't it. Here. Let me see that."

  Rita-Mae passed over the picture. It had a big bulky frame around it, silver, and inside a photograph of Reverend James Graham with one hand on his son's shoulder. Little George Graham, no older than ten, looked like a chubby little angel. He was dressed in a white robe, and his fair hair fluffed around his face in curls. He was on his knees praying, hands clasped together.

  It should have looked nice, but it didn't. Something about it was all wrong, and Olida couldn't figure out what it was except maybe the way Reverend James looked, all grim and angry.

  She put the picture back on the nightstand where Rita-Mae had found it.

  "I wasn't gonna steal it," Rita said sullenly. Olida started looking along the walls for a phone outlet. There was one behind the bed, no sign of a phone to go with it. "I wasn't. Swear to God."

  "Olida, what you think about maybe making a fire?" Zenobia asked. She was poking carefully through a pile of things in the corner, dirty clothes, old threadbare towels. "Get the Fire Department to come? Wouldn't that help?"

  "Don't think so," Olida said. Zenobia cocked her head over and frowned. "If we can't get out, they damn sure won't have an easy time gettin' in. What if the fire -- "

  "Oh," Zenobia agreed. Rita-Mae stopped in the act of running her hand under the pillow on the bed. Her eyes went wide.

  "We could burn to death in here, couldn't we? If somethin' happened?" she said. Olida shrugged. "Damn. Damn, I want out of here. Swear to God -- "

  "Why don't you look in that closet, baby, see if he put the phone in there," Olida interrupted.

  "In the closet? Are you kidding?" When nobody answered, Rita got up with a grunt of disgust and jerked the closet door open.

  And screamed. She scurried back from the closet door and bumped into the bed and fell backward, still screaming. Zenobia hurried over to her.

  Olida turned to look in the closet. And found a tangle of dark barbed wire looking back.

  The whole space was packed with it, twists and spikes and coils like a live thing. She started to close the door and then aimed her flashlight inside again.

  About five feet off the ground she saw hanks of hair tangled in the barbs. She reached in and pulled a strand out. In the light it was red.

  She shut the door, quietly. Rita-Mae had stopped screaming and was just crying, and Zenobia looked a whole lot whiter than before.

  "Come on," Olida said quietly. She wasn't sure they would, but they followed her back out into the hall. She turned to look at them. Rita-Mae was a wreck, a bawling little girl with red eyes and shaking shoulders. No spit and venom in her now. Zenobia looked better, but she was no Rock of Ages.

  Olida's heart was fluttering like a butterfly in the spring, and her fingers felt clumsy and slow. She wanted to sit down and knew she couldn't, not here. There had to be a phone. She remembered calling the Deacon to come fix her sink. The thought occurred to her that he might have had somebody here, somebody in that mousetrap room or in that barbed wire closet, while he was talking to her about leaky drains. Maybe somebody had been screaming and she hadn't even heard it.

  She felt sick to her stomach, and wished she could find a quiet place, someplace safe. She wanted to go home and tell Lark he was right, she never should have come here.

  She wanted to know where her daughter LaVelle had been for these last six years. Please, Sweet Jesus, don't let her have been here in this house. I couldn't stand that.

  Her flashlight painted the walls in bright circles and found another door, this one gaping open. She went to it and shone the light inside.

  Just a bathroom. The toilet had the seat up, just like in any man's house. The sink looked clean and well-scrubbed. The bathtub was one of the old kind, the ones she'd seen in rich white antique stores for the price of a good-running car. Claw-feet and all. It didn't have a shower curtain.

  Something hung over it. She shone the light up and it glittered on a thick steel chain that came down from the ceiling. There was a big sharp hook on the end over the tub.

  She didn't want to know any more, or see anymore. She backed away and found her back to the wall, and Zenobia and Rita-Mae staring at her in the shadows.

  "You okay?" Zenobia asked. She sounded scared. Olida nodded and took a breath; it was hard to do, as if she was too tired to breathe. Her left arm felt all pins-and-needley.

  There were no more doors at this end of the hall, but as Olida turned something brushed her face and made her jump back. Her flashlight swung wildly around until she found the cord she'd walked under.

  Just a simple cotton cord, there to pull on to bring the attic stairs down.

  "I don't want to go no further," Rita-Mae said as Olida went past her, and grabbed her arm. Olida felt it as kind of a pressure on her skin, like water. "Please, Olida, let's just wait here."

  "For what, baby?" Olida asked. She was so tired it was hard to stay on her feet. "Ain't nobody gonna come."

  "Lark and Antonio will come if we don't come home," Zenobia argued. "They'll bring police if they can't get in."

  "You want to wait for them? Rita?"

  "No," Rita said. Her voice got higher and faster, packing words so tight Olida could hardly understand them. "I wanna go home. Please, please, let me go home now, I done good work for you, I always worked hard, I never did nothing wrong in my life,
please let me go, please let me go I don't wanna stay here!"

  She stopped suddenly, gasping for air, looking like a big-mouthed bass out of water. Olida patted her on the arm.

  "We gonna get out of this, honey. Now you come with me, and hold my hand, and we gonna find that phone and call the police."

  Rita-Mae gave her a panicked look but took her hand, and her fingers felt cold and shaky. Probably the first time she's ever held a black hand, Olida thought. Probably scares her as much as anything else in this house.

  Zenobia trotted two steps ahead, flashlight nodding up and down and making a halo around her body. She passed the stairs and put her hand on the first doorknob on the right.

  "Ready?" she asked.

  Olida nodded, realized she couldn't be seen in the dark and turned her flashlight up toward her own face. Zenobia let out a little scream and jumped back.

  "Jesus, don't do that!" Zenobia yelled. "You look like some spook in the haunted house!"

  Olida felt a long cold chill. The haunted house. If she let herself think about it --

  She wondered what she'd see, and then prayed to God that she wouldn't see anything at all, ever, even if it meant being blind to the end of her days.

  Zenobia opened the door and shone her flashlight inside.

  Just a storage closet, full of old sagging boxes and dusty ragged stacks of papers. One of the papers slid off the top of the stack nearest the door and drifted down to nudge at Olida's foot. She bent down to pick it up and felt her head pound with the effort.

  "What is it?" Rita-Mae asked. Olida squinted at it.

  "It's a picture somebody drew."

  "A kid?"

  "Naw, it's good, in pencil or -- "

  She stopped and just stared at the picture. It was so good she could see the tears running down the little boy's cheeks as he knelt on the floor with his hands together, praying.

  Except his hands were tied together.

  And behind him a big dark shadow held something like a whip, with teeth on it.

  The face of the little boy was the same as the picture in the bedroom. George Graham, dressed up in his little angel-suit, praying. With his hands together, and something terrible behind him.

  Olida bit her lip and put the drawing down. She bent over and picked up another one.

  The little boy was wearing a crown of thorns, only they weren't thorns, they looked like twists of barbed wire.

  She let it fall and backed out of the closet. Zenobia and Rita-Mae looked at her anxiously.

  She crossed the hall and opened up the last door. It didn't make any noise at all, and she smelled fresh oil in the puff of air it made opening. Her flashlight stabbed inside.

  A white face looked back at her.

  Zenobia screamed.

  Rita-Mae ran away, screaming.

  Olida's heart fluttered in her chest like a dying bird, and she thought, Lord, I'm sorry I am so weak.

  It was a picture of Reverend James Graham, blown up to life-size and standing up in the middle of the room. He had his arms outstretched; somebody had looped barbed wire over his hands and driven nails through his cardboard eyes.

  There were old flowers lying in heaps around him, some of them old funeral wreaths with sun-bleached black ribbons. A big old family Bible lay at his feet, open and marked with hanks of what looked like human hair.

  On the walls were pictures of George Graham, hundreds of them, all dressed up like Daddy's little white angel. There were more pictures on the floor, all turned to face toward the giant image of Reverend Graham like a congregation listening to his last sermon. Olida started to back out from the room.

  Her flashlight swung up a little.

  She thought at first they were streamers, black streamers, then she thought they were those things the wind spun around, mobiles. But they were only strings, hanging from hooks, with things tied on the ends.

  One of them turned a little in the breeze from the hallway. The thing on the end of the string was a figure-eight lying on its side, like one of those symbols Olida had seen that were supposed to mean infinity.

  There were hundreds swinging from the ceiling.

  "Olida!" Zenobia called. She sounded scared. Olida reached up and touched the nearest figure-eight. It swung away from her and back. It felt thick and stiff.

  "In a minute," she said, and reached up to take the thing off the hook that held it.

  She was looking at a shoelace.

  It was in a figure-eight because it had once held somebody's wrists tied tight together.

  It was stiff because it had been soaked with blood and left to dry.

  She couldn't hold onto it any more. It landed on top of one of George Graham's pictures, and she looked at the small size of the loops in it and realized that it must have held a child, or a very small woman.

  There were no more rooms. There was no phone.

  No hope of getting out of this, ever. This was hell.

  Rita-Mae screamed again. It sounded like she had gone downstairs.

  "Zenobia, would you please go get Rita-Mae?" she asked. Her voice sounded small, dead in her ears.

  "No," Zenobia said again, and her voice was shaking. Olida turned to look toward the beam of Zenobia's shaking flashlight. "No, you come down with me. Let's go."

  "You go on," Olida said. Her eyes hurt, ached like they might bleed. She felt tired and empty. No sense in going, she thought. Might as well be here as anywhere else. Here, at least, the ghosts were all sad and scared.

  She knew she was never going to leave.

  Zenobia started jabbering something at her in Spanish, something that sounded angry and scared. Olida just waved it off and sat down against the wall. The flashlight felt hot on her skin. She closed her eyes and let herself relax.

  Wasn't so bad, now. The numbness in her arm felt like it was growing, touching her cold all along her neck and chest.

  Like a ghost's hug.

  Zenobia kept on jabbering, hauling at her shoulder. Olida just ignored her. Zenobia started to cry.

  "You go on," Olida said again. Poor little George Graham, she thought. Poor little man, so scared.

  She wasn't really scared anymore at all.

  "Get your fat ass up!" Zenobia screamed at her, and yanked on her arm. Olida opened her eyes to squint at her.

  There was somebody coming out of the door behind Zenobia. Olida wondered for a minute how she could see her so clearly in the dark. And then she knew.

  The woman was white, flabby-fat, older. Her hair stuck out in white clumps.

  She was crying, hands over her face.

  Maybe that was because of the mousetraps pinching her feet and hands and hanging like hungry rats from her sagging skin.

  "Oh," Olida whispered. "Oh, no, don't cry, honey."

  Zenobia thought she was talking to her, and sniffed and wiped her eyes.

  "I ain't crying," she said, and sniffed. "You got to get up, 'Lida, you got to."

  There was somebody else coming down the hall, now. He was a young kid, about sixteen, tall and gawky as hell. He was all cut up.

  Barbed wire. It looped all around him like a cage, sliced open his face, hooked in his lips when he opened them to scream.

  Olida reached out her hands to Zenobia and let the Mexican woman pull her up to her feet.

  "Where's Rita-Mae?" she asked. Zenobia shook her head. Her flashlight bobbed and trembled.

  "Ran away. Don't know where."

  There were other folks in the hall now, all crying, all wearing their fears all over them. Olida hugged herself for warmth and watched Zenobia as she turned and waddled for the stairs.

  She walked right through a knobby-faced old man who was kneeling on the floor, hands tucked under his armpits. He shivered out of focus, but when Zenobia was past he was solid again, glowing like a light bulb.

  Olida walked to him. He looked up at her.

  "I'm sorry," she said, and reached down a hand to him. "I'm so sorry, honey."

  He reached out for
her and he didn't have any hands. Blood splashed out over her in a cold spray. She yelled and held her hands up in front of her face, feeling the cold blood all over her skin, in her eyes, in her mouth.

  Lord, it had never been this bad, never, never . . .

  Zenobia came back and grabbed her, towed her right on through the line of ghosts reaching out for her. Olida felt the cold brush of their skins and wanted to stop and hold them, let them know it was all right now, that God was with them, but she couldn't stop and Zenobia wouldn't let go.

  Her legs were weak. She sat down on the top step without meaning to, and Zenobia had to come back up a step.

  "Where we goin'?" Olida asked. Zenobia just pulled stubbornly at her hand. "We goin' back to the parlor to look at my house through the window? Don't make no sense, does it?"

  "You sure don't make no sense, Olida. Get up! Get up and come on!"

  Olida was thinking about that, about making her legs work enough to go down the stairs, and something happened that made her forget about that.

  The door downstairs opened. All the air in the house seemed to just wave, like water in a pond. And Olida and Zenobia swayed with it.

  "Who is it?" Zenobia whispered. There was a heavy thud as the door closed again.

  Somewhere downstairs, in the distance, Rita-Mae was cursing and crying, all in the same breath. Olida heard her running back toward the front door.

  "Hey! Hey, we couldn't get the door open, don't close it, let me out! Let me out, I gotta get home, let me -- " Rita-Mae's running footsteps slowed and stopped. "Ain't you supposed to be in the hos -- "

  Rita-Mae stopped talking. Stopped making any noise at all.

  The whole house was silent.

  "Dios Mio," Zenobia breathed, and Olida saw her cross herself. Her face looked yellow now, all sunk in with fear. "It's him."

  Something was being dragged downstairs.

  Olida turned her flashlight off. Zenobia clung tight to hers, wouldn't let Olida touch it until Olida slapped her fingers hard and yanked it away. She fumbled with the sliding switch and heard it click. The light went off.

  Dark, now. Darker than before. At the bottom of the stairs the light was gray, like fog.