The Killing Room

by Manning, John

  Up ahead was the exit for Youngsport. The family was so rich the town was named after them. Douglas angled the bike and slowed down a bit as he headed onto the off-ramp. He thought he could smell the sea from here. He’d always loved the scent of salty air and briny water. It brought back happy memories. It made him think of the days when his dad and mom were still alive. They’d come up here to Maine from their house in Connecticut and picnic on the great lawn that ran alongside the cliffs. Douglas would watch the seabirds dive into the ocean to catch fish. Sometimes Dad would take him out on a skiff and they’d dive off the sides, swimming in the cold, clear, blue water. Those were good days. Everybody had seemed so happy.

  Roaring the Harley down a winding, maple-tree-lined lane, Douglas was glad to be back in Maine. He hadn’t called Uncle Howie to tell him he was coming. He didn’t want his cousins getting wind of his early arrival. If they did, Ryan would no doubt hop in his Mercedes-Benz and head north to join them, his obnoxious twin sister Chelsea probably in tow. They weren’t about to allow their vagabond cousin Douglas any free, uninterrupted time with Uncle Howard. Douglas just laughed. He knew Uncle Howie would be glad to see him. He always was. The one thing Douglas wished was that Brenda had accompanied him. It would have been good for Uncle Howie to see that he was finally serious about a girl, that he might really be ready to settle down.

  Except he wasn’t. Not really. He didn’t love Brenda, and she had figured that out. She was a great girl, but the sparks just weren’t there. Douglas had never known sparks. Maybe they were just fairy tales. But Dad had said he’d felt sparks for Mom. “She is my morning, noon, and night,” he’d said. Douglas figured Mom had felt the same way, since after Dad’s sudden death during a family reunion in Maine, she pulled inward, becoming sullen and depressed. That was why she’d taken her life.

  No such passion existed between Douglas and Brenda. “Face it, Douggie,” she’d said, when he’d asked her to come with him on this trip. “I’m just an ornament for the back of your bike. You just want to show me off to all those rich relatives of yours. You just want them to think you’re gonna get married and be a respectable member of the family. I know you too well, Douggie. I know you don’t really want to marry me.”

  He’d tried insisting that he did, but he couldn’t even convince himself. Brenda deserved better. She was a hardworking waitress at a twenty-four-hour diner on the highway outside Syracuse. She had big gorgeous brown eyes and the figure of a model. What guy wouldn’t want her? But there just weren’t any sparks.

  Douglas rounded the bend and started heading up the hill. At the crest of the hill, he knew, was Youngsport, the little village overlooking the sea. And at the very top sat his uncle’s house.

  Suddenly a person darted in front of him from the side of the road. It all happened so fast that Douglas couldn’t see who it was or exactly how far ahead of him the person was. All he could do was instinctively swerve the bike to his right. He careened off the road, bumping over the curb and burning a rut through the tall grass. Only through sheer luck did he avoid hitting a tree. The bike’s momentum was slowed by the grass and the swampy muck on the side of the road. He came to a stop with the Harley nearly on top of him, its front tire still spinning.

  “What the fuck?” Douglas shouted.

  He pulled himself up from under the bike. He glanced out into the road to see if the person was still there. No one. There was silence, except for the hissing of the Harley. Douglas turned back to the bike and righted it, cursing the mud that clung to it as well as to himself, but thankful for it, too. It likely prevented a far worse injury.

  He stepped out onto the road, looking around again for the fool who had run in front of him. Once more, he saw no one. Where the hell had they gone? Standing there, looking up and down the road, Douglas was struck by just how quiet it was. Not a sound. No cars in the distance. He wasn’t that far from the highway. He thought he should have been able to still hear the rumble of trucks. But it was silent. Utterly, completely silent. There weren’t even any birds. The trees were thick with bright green leaves. Shouldn’t he hear some chattering from the branches? It was like watching television with the volume turned all the way down. The only thing Douglas could hear was his own heart, still racing from his fall.

  Then he saw her.

  The person who had run in front of his bike.

  It was a young woman. She stood across the street in a white dress, staring at him. Her hair was long and black, blowing in a breeze that made no sound as it danced through the trees. Douglas was caught by her dark eyes. He stood there immobile.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  Douglas blinked.

  A man in a red pickup truck had pulled up alongside him. He hadn’t heard him arrive, hadn’t seen him until he was there, practically on top of him. The volume had been turned back up. Crows were calling from the treetops. Mosquitoes buzzed around his ears.

  Douglas turned his eyes to the man in the truck. He was leaning across the seat, talking to him through the rolled-down passenger window.

  “You okay?” the man asked. “Looks like quite a spill you took there.”

  Still Douglas didn’t reply. He moved his eyes past the truck to search out again the dark woman in the white dress.

  But she was gone.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Douglas finally managed to say. “I’m okay.”

  “How’s the bike?”

  Douglas turned around to inspect it. “Handlebar’s a little banged up. But it could’ve been worse.”

  “What made you swerve like that? Fall asleep at the wheel?”

  “No. Didn’t you see her? Some girl—” Again Douglas’s eyes panned the trees across the road. “She ran in front of me. It was all I could do to avoid hitting her.”

  “Didn’t see no girl. Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know,” Douglas said, looking again at his bike.

  “You gonna be able to ride it?” the man asked.

  Douglas shrugged. “I’m gonna have to try.”

  “Here.” The man turned the ignition off in his truck and stepped outside. He was a big beefy sort, with big arms without any muscular definition and practically no neck. He wore a Red Sox baseball cap and a blue flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off. “We can put it in the back of the truck, and I can drop you off at Stu’s Mechanic Shop in town.”

  “I’ll probably be all right,” Douglas said.

  The man made a face. “Why take a chance, bud? The sheriff here ain’t a very forgiving man. He’ll ride your tail if he sees you.”

  Douglas sighed and steered the bike over to the back of the truck. The man let down the hatch and lowered a ramp. Together they rolled the bike into the truck bed.

  “Name’s Murphy,” the man said. “Reggie Murphy. You’re not from around here.”

  They shook hands. “No, but I have family here,” Douglas told him. “Come to visit.” He met Reggie Murphy’s eyes with his own. “I’m Douglas Young.”

  “Oh, one of the Youngs,” Murphy said. “Back to see the old man, eh?”

  Douglas nodded as he slipped into the truck. Murphy returned to his place behind the wheel. He had been smoking a cigar. He placed it back in his mouth now and took a long drag.

  “I was up there at the house a few months ago,” Murphy said, exhaling smoke as he started the truck. “I work for a contractor, and Mr. Young hired us to do some work on the back terrace. Man, that is one fine house.”

  “It is indeed,” Douglas said, glancing out the window as they drove past the wall of maple trees. Once more he wondered where the woman had gone and why she had just stood there staring at him. That eerie silence perplexed him. He must have been stunned from the impact. That must have been why he hadn’t heard anything for several minutes, why the woman’s eyes had so entranced him.

  Her dark, beautiful eyes.

  “You’ve got your big family reunion coming up this fall, don’t you?” Murphy was asking. “That’s what your uncle had us doi
ng the work for. You know, fixing up the terrace, laying down some new stonework. A lot of it had started to crumble. That’s an old house. When was it built? Like 1900, right?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Douglas said, still distracted, still looking out the window.

  “Mr. Young was quite excited about the family gathering. Happens only once every ten years. So it’s quite the event, eh?”

  Douglas nodded. “It’s the only time all of us are together. I try to make it a point to see my uncle every year or so, and occasionally I’ll run into some of the others while I’m there. But the reunion is the one time when every Young is expected to make an appearance.”

  Murphy laughed. “And if they don’t, it could mean being taken out of the will, eh?”

  Douglas made no reply to that.

  They had turned onto the town road. Maple trees gave way to small houses, then a convenience store, then the white clapboard post office. An American flag whipped in the breeze out front. And next to it was the mechanic shop. The word STU’S was painted in big red letters on its shingled roof.

  “Well, here you go, my friend,” Murphy said, pulling the truck in for a stop and shutting off the ignition. “Let’s roll that bike in and let Stu take a look.”

  The damage wasn’t serious. “I can probably have it fixed for you by tomorrow morning,” Stu told him. He was a weather-beaten old man with intense blue eyes, wearing a pair of white overalls stained nearly black with grease and oil. Douglas thanked him. Unhooking his backpack from the side of the bike, he flung it over his shoulder.

  “I can give you a ride up to the house,” Murphy said.

  “No, thanks,” Douglas said. “I really appreciate your help. But I can walk from here. Will do me good. Clear my head a little.” He smiled. “And it’ll be good to check out the town again. It’s been a while.”

  Murphy gave him a salute and headed off in his truck. Douglas took a deep breath. His knees and forearms were starting to ache a little from the fall. But what troubled him more was how fuzzy his mind still felt. He couldn’t get over that dreamlike sensation he’d experienced right after the accident. The way that woman had looked at him. The way her eyes had held him. He hadn’t ever wanted to look away.

  He began to trudge up the hill from the village. He knew there was an old stone staircase cut into the side of the cliff. It led almost all the way up to Uncle Howie’s house. He found it without too much trouble. The steps began in the mossy backyard of the town’s drugstore. When Douglas was a boy, it was called Andersen’s Pharmacy, and he’d sit there with Dad and drink strawberry milkshakes at the counter. Now the old building had been torn down and replaced with a shiny new CVS. But the old staircase was still out in back, even if it was largely grown over with ivy and grass. Douglas started up.

  He wasn’t a guy who was easily spooked. He’d gone down in that shark cage off the coast of Maui many times and had witnessed plenty of fangs gnawing against the iron bars in front of him. He’d found it thrilling. On the merchant ship, he’d survived many storms; one time, they’d nearly capsized. Even when he’d found his mother’s lifeless body in the kitchen of their house, some ten months after his father had died, Douglas hadn’t freaked out. He was just fifteen years old, but he calmly called 911 and followed the operator’s instructions carefully. He shut off the gas, then checked for a pulse. When he reported that there was none, the operator told him to stay right there, that help was on its way. So he’d sat on the linoleum floor, holding his mother’s cold hand, for twenty-five minutes. He didn’t cry until the funeral, and then only for a moment.

  But his famed self-control had taken a spill back there along with his bike. He couldn’t get that woman’s eyes out of his mind. Who was she? Why had she run out in front of him? Why had she stood there staring at him? And why hadn’t Murphy seen her?

  Halfway up the cliff, the staircase was nearly obliterated by intrusive tree roots and years of rockslides. Still, Douglas managed, careful not to lose his footing even if his knees were really starting to ache. He thought maybe he’d scraped his thigh, too. He thought he could sense blood under his dark blue jeans.

  He turned as the path led through an old cemetery. And not just any cemetery. Douglas knew it had been the private burial ground for the Young family for several generations. His parents weren’t buried here; they were back in Connecticut. But his grandparents were here, and lots of other old relatives dating back to the early nineteenth century. This was where Uncle Howard insisted he would be buried someday as well.

  A big black crow alit on top of one old brownstone grave marker. It let out a caw and spread its wings, then folded them against its sides. Douglas squinted to make out the words that were engraved on the stone.

  DESMOND D. YOUNG

  1880–1930

  That was his great-great-grandfather. Uncle Howie’s father. He had passed on his middle name Douglas all the way down through five generations. Glancing around the cemetery as the crow let out another cry and took off into the air, Douglas shivered as the bird’s shadow passed across his face. Across the way stood a newer stone. This one marked his great grandfather, the first Douglas Desmond Young. Died 1940. And then, off to the right, a shiny marble slab, flush with the earth. This was Douglas’s grandfather. Died 1980.

  They all died in the first year of a new decade, Douglas thought. He’d never realized that until now. The first year of a new decade—when the family reunion was held.

  Like this year.

  Douglas continued to make his way up the path. Dead leaves crunched underfoot. A blue jay seemed to scold him from somewhere in the trees above.

  And then he saw it.

  Through the trees, the great stone house on the top of the hill came into view. It was a house that seemed to grow bigger and more impressive every time Douglas saw it. Usually, places you knew as a kid seemed smaller when you saw them again as adults. But Uncle Howie’s house seemed to grow another wing every time Douglas visited. Of course it hadn’t. There was nothing new about the house, nothing at all, unless one counted that terrace out back that Murphy had said he’d worked on. Uncle Howie’s house was like a trip back into time. The stones worn smooth by decades of wind and salt air told the story of its long existence.

  Crunching through the leaves up the final bluff, Douglas neared the great lawn of the estate. In the far distance he spied the barn, where Uncle Howie kept his stable of prize horses. To the right were the tennis courts; to the left was the greenhouse, where the old man tended his rare and exotic orchids. Here on top of the hill, the wind whipped hard against Douglas’s face. He could hear it howling through the eaves of the house as he got closer. He was happily anticipating the look of surprise when Uncle Howie saw him—a look that would turn to both joy and bemusement, Douglas thought. Joy because his little hoodlum had come for an unexpected visit, and bemusement when he saw the mud all over his clothes.

  A small smile had begun to stretch across Douglas’s face when suddenly he saw her again.

  The young woman who had run in front of his bike.

  Douglas froze.

  She stood across the lawn. She was just a tiny figure, about a hundred yards away. At this distance Douglas couldn’t see her eyes as clearly as he had earlier, but it was her all right. The same dark hair, the same filmy white dress, both blowing in the wind.

  “Hey!” Douglas shouted.

  She stood there looking at him.

  “Hey! Who are you? Why are you following me?”

  He began to approach her across the grass. He had made it about halfway when she suddenly turned and bolted. “Hey!” Douglas called again.

  The woman ran along the cliffs. Douglas could see now that she was barefoot.

  He ran after her.

  “I don’t want to hurt you!” he cried. “I just want to make sure you’re okay! And find out why you’re following me!”

  She just kept running toward the cliffs.

  “Be careful!” Douglas shouted, slowing dow
n himself. “Okay, I won’t come after you!”

  But still the woman ran. She was just a distant speck on the far side of the cliffs by now, though her dark hair was still discernible in the bright sunlight. She ran as if she were terrified. She ran so fast—

  Douglas blinked.

  She ran straight off the side of the cliff!

  “Jesus!” Douglas cried and began running himself again.

  Had he seen right?

  That crazy woman ran right off the cliff!

  He reached the spot where she had gone over and looked down. There was no sign of a body on the rocks below. The water was just far enough beyond the rocks that there was no way she could have fallen into the surf. If she’d run off this cliff at this spot, she’d be lying right down there, mangled on the rocks below. It was at least a forty-foot drop. No one could have survived that, especially not at the rate she’d been running. There was no way she could have jumped off and then run down the beach. She’d have smashed onto the rocks. But there was no body anywhere.

  It was as if she’d vanished into the air.

  Douglas ran his hands through his long hair. “Jesus,” he whispered to himself.

  Has he imagined the whole thing?

  He remembered how stunned and dazed he’d felt back on the road, right after the accident. Had he hit his head and not realized it? He must have. This had all been a hallucination. There was no woman. At least not up here. Maybe there had been, down on the road—there had to have been, for someone had run in front of him—but not up here. Thinking rationally, Douglas concluded he was certain that he’d been alone as he climbed up the cliffside staircase. And if the woman had come by the road, there was no way she would have beat him here. The road from the village up to Uncle Howie’s house was long and winding. To walk it would take at least double the amount of time that it took to take the staircase. So there was no way the woman could have gotten here before him.