Deep Cuts

by Angel Leigh McCoy

  He had to stop.

  He had to know they weren’t going to jump.

  The moment he saw the women, he’d thought of the last time he saw Carmine. Leaving his office, his personal belongings collected in a cardboard box, a framed picture of his family face down on top—and his face so pale Drew had thought he might faint. He had wanted to walk him out to his car, maybe even drive him home to make sure he got there safe and sound. But too many people were watching, and no one else stepped forward to help the losers. That’s what they called the ones who lost their jobs; Drew didn’t want to get too close, afraid he might be seen as one of them. Afraid it might be true.

  Afraid all his work and time were wasted, and he would be discarded too.

  Yet if he’d helped, maybe Carmine would’ve made it home.

  Home.

  It seemed so far away to Drew now, and the night so late.

  He had to be back at work in only a few hours.

  …home…

  A question that had been nagging him sprang to mind: Whose torn sneaker had Venge tossed from the bridge? He doubted it belonged to any of the sisters. He should’ve looked over the side, into the darkness where the women had been looking when he first saw them. Maybe it was better he hadn’t.

  “What do you mean you’re going to eat me?” Drew asked.

  The older girls stopped whispering and leaned forward between the seats.

  “She means what she says,” Nameless told him. “We’ve been out all night. We’re hungry. We want to eat. But not until after you take us home.”

  “That’s sick,” Drew said. “That’s nothing to joke about.”

  “I never joke about eating,” Venge said.

  Her two sisters laughed.

  “You’re all crazy. Get out of my car. Now!” Drew tried to swerve to the side of the road and stop the car, but the women’s words—give us a ride—resurfaced in his aching head and forced him to keep driving. He couldn’t lift his foot from the gas, or turn the car, or move his hands on the wheel.

  Nameless leaned between the seats. “Take us home.”

  “I don’t know where your home is,” Drew said.

  “I told you. Go to Quantuck.”

  “Where in Quantuck?”

  “We’ll tell you how to go,” Grudge said. “Turn left at the next traffic light.”

  “No,” Nameless said. “Go straight.”

  “I want to go the back way.”

  “It will take too long. We’ll go the right way.”

  “Right, wrong.” Grudge gave a dismissive wave. “They both get us there, don’t they?”

  “No, no, no, he should take the road that passes by the cemetery,” Venge said. “That’s the fastest way—and it goes by the cemetery.”

  “Hush,” Nameless said. “The cemetery is way out of our way.”

  “The cemetery is nice at night,” Grudge said. “And it’s such a dark night. I say we go that way.”

  “No. Go straight,” Nameless told Drew,

  “I know Quantuck,” Drew said. “Tell me the address. I can find my way there.”

  All three of the sisters replied, almost in unison, “Shut up! Drive where we tell you.”

  Venge whispered to Drew, “We have to find our own way home. If Father knows we snuck out, he’ll stop us from wandering again.”

  Drew clenched the wheel and followed the road. Traffic was sparse even for this time of night. All the shops were closed, and the late-night diners and fast food restaurants looked dead and full of vague shadows. There wasn’t even a cop on patrol as there almost always was on this road at night. Not that it mattered. Drew couldn’t have asked for help even if there was any to be had. The second he thought about stopping, the pain in his head spiked, and the women’s words filled his mind again, locking his body behind the wheel.

  They passed three more lights. Nameless told Drew to take the next left. Grudge argued, and her sister clamped a hand over her mouth to silence her.

  Drew turned left, and they came to a fork in the road.

  “Go right,” Nameless said.

  Grudge shoved her sister’s hand from her mouth. “No, go left.”

  “This way is boring,” Venge said. “Let’s go by the cemetery.”

  “Morning comes fast,” Nameless said. “You want to get home before sunrise or do you want to be punished?”

  “I don’t want to be punished.”

  “Then forget the cemetery.”

  “But I’m soooo hungry,” Venge said.

  “We’ll eat later. We have to get home before father knows we snuck out,” Grudge said. “Go left.”

  “No, go right,” Nameless said.

  Drew stopped at the crux of the intersection.

  “Left,” Grudge said.

  “Right,” Nameless said.

  “Go back a block and take the left so we can go by the cemetery,” Venge said.

  “Shut up,” Nameless said. “Don’t listen to them. Go right.”

  Grudge snapped at her sisters, and Venge complained again that she was so hungry. The pain behind Drew’s eyes spread to his whole head. Pangs of nausea squirmed in his stomach. The car was idling. If only he could move he could’ve taken the keys and run so they couldn’t use the Audi to chase him. He would have a good head start, and he was fast. He ran five days a week. His legs were longer than theirs, and they would never catch up running barefoot—except he couldn’t unwrap his fingers from around the wheel. He couldn’t unfasten his seat belt or reach for the door handle. His body simply refused.

  “What…” he said. “What are you?”

  The women stopped arguing. Their deep, cold eyes and sudden smiles filled the rearview mirror, and now there was no mistaking the rows of jagged teeth hidden behind their soft lips. Drew didn’t want to believe it. Maybe their teeth were filed, like a body modification thing, or they were fake, like custom vampire fangs Drew had worn one Halloween in college. He could almost buy that if not for how large their teeth were—and that he was no longer in control of his body. Had they hypnotized him? How? But that didn’t feel right. His mind veered toward darker answers and groped for the right word—demons, ghosts, monsters. But Drew didn’t believe in any of those things.

  Venge said, “We are spiders, spinning our web.”

  Grudge said, “We are lovely shadows breaking your heart.”

  Nameless leaned between the seats. Her breath brushed over Drew’s neck. “We are lost daughters.”

  They all laughed then.

  “You know about daughters, don’t you?” Nameless asked Drew. “I smell your daughters on you. Leah and Gabby. They’re good daughters. They ask you for only one thing above all the things you give them. Do you give them that one thing? Hmm? Do you, Drew?”

  Drew couldn’t answer. His thoughts disintegrated into the pain swirling in his head.

  “No, you don’t,” the woman said. “Do you know what that one thing is? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not fancy chocolates. Got a guess?”

  In his mind, Drew heard echoes of Gabby and Leah scolding him for working so late, for spending so much time at the office, for always coming home and leaving again while they slept. He heard Heather lecturing him: “No one gets to the end of their life and wishes they spent more time at work.” He’d told them he’d try—he’d promised them…promised…and as often as he had, he’d broken his promises.

  “Oops, guess not.” Grudge giggled. “Now you’ll never know. You’ll never see Leah and Gabby again, never know what’s going on in their lives, and you won’t be there for them when they really need you most. All daughters have a dark side, Drew. They have secrets, you know, and secrets always turn toxic sooner or later.”

  “Hungry,” Venge said.

  Drew found his voice then, only a whisper. “How’d you know my daughters’ names?”

  Nameless inhaled, flashing her jagged teeth. “Their scent is all over you. I could follow it to your house and pay them a visit. Would you like that, Drew?”r />
  Drew shook his head.

  “Then turn right.”

  Drew stepped on the gas and took the right fork. The sisters resumed bickering. Every turn was an argument, every intersection a dispute. Drew trawled the night while the sisters fought. They were cruising around a residential neighborhood of winding streets, steep hills, and dead ends. There were no streetlights, and the houses were dark. Beyond reach of the car’s headlights was a deep, patchy grayness only a shade removed from black by the ambient light reflected off the overcast sky. It was passing 3 a.m. Heather would be worried Drew hadn’t called or answered his phone. He turned down another desolate road.

  “You’re taking us the wrong way,” Grudge said.

  “What do you know?” Nameless said.

  “What I know,” Venge said, “is we should’ve gone past the cemetery. My stomach is growling, and we’d be home by now.”

  “Oh, will you please let it go,” Nameless said. “You could stand to miss a meal or two.”

  “Like you’re so smart. Can’t even find our way home,” Venge said. “Our step-father will have the door locked up tight by the time you get us there. Then what’ll we do?”

  “Shut up. Everything will be fine,” Nameless said.

  Time seemed to slip away faster now, and the fuel gauge fell below a quarter of a tank. Drew had meant to fill up on the way home. He didn’t know where he would find a gas station open this late, and he wondered what the sisters might do if he ran out of fuel.

  “Here!” Nameless said. “Turn left here.”

  Drew sensed that in spite of the sisters’ arguing and all their misdirection, every turn was taking them closer to their home, a place Drew didn’t want reach if he could help it. Mustering all his willpower and concentrating on Leah, Gabby, and Heather—remembering their faces, their voices—he was able for a moment to silence the sisters’ commands in his head. It was enough that he could turn right instead of left, and he felt triumphant. His skull throbbed like it might split apart, but he’d defied the women and broken their control. Then Nameless smacked him in the back of his head so hard he jolted forward and cracked his nose against the steering wheel.

  “Drive where I say!” she shrieked.

  Drew rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. It was running and sore, and it amplified the pain beating inside of his skull. He found a tissue in the console and wiped it. His errant turn had taken them into an industrial area. Sprawling old buildings and fences topped with barbed wire raised deep, complicated shadows alongside the road.

  “Go straight then take the next right, and we’ll be back on track,” Grudge said.

  “That’s one way,” Nameless said.

  “What’s another?”

  Nameless didn’t reply.

  “I thought so,” Grudge said.

  When the turn came, though, Drew focused on his wife and daughters, and once more broke the sisters’ control; he forced himself to punch the gas and drive straight through the intersection.

  The intensity of his headache exploded.

  The sisters were on him in seconds, spilling into the front seat, crowding him, pinching him, drawing blood with their fingernails, screaming in his ears—and blocking his view of the road. The car swerved and jerked. It jolted over a sharp bump. Drew hit the brakes, bringing them to a shuddering halt halfway up the curb, only inches from a telephone pole. The interior of the car swam with shadows, and then Nameless was in the passenger seat, while Grudge and Venge had returned to the back. Nameless held her finger against Drew’s neck. Her nail dug into his skin like a saw tooth.

  “You’re wasting our time! Drive where we say, or we’ll eat you here and now,” she said.

  “You’re going to eat me anyway,” Drew said.

  The woman let out a low hiss then sniffed around Drew’s neck. “Drive, or one night we’ll go visit…Heather. She’s sitting up with the TV on wondering why you aren’t home yet, why you haven’t called. She smells so…sweet. And after we see her, we’ll go visit Leah and Gabby…unless…you…drive…now.”

  Drew felt near exhausted. The sisters’ voices returned, roaring inside his head, and he couldn’t gather the energy to resist them again, so he drove. They directed him along crooked routes that detoured and overlapped until they came to the edge of the industrial zone and passed rows of run-down houses.

  “There,” Nameless said. “Go left up that hill.”

  Grudge and Venge said nothing.

  Drew accelerated up the hill. The trees and brush alongside the road were thick and unruly, and they grew denser and more scraggly as the car ascended.

  “Park by the house at the top of the hill.”

  The higher they drove, the more cracked and pitted the street became. The car jounced as it strained up the incline and rolled to a dead end. Ensconced among pines and elms tall enough to blot out the sky stood a three-story Victorian in an overgrown yard filled with wild shrubs and rangy weeds. Not a single light glowed inside or out. The house’s black windows were grimy and cracked. Its shingles and shutters hung askew, and paint was peeling from its trim. A weedy, gravel driveway faded into the shadows beside it. Drew parked at the mouth of the drive and shut off the engine. The sisters exited the car. Venge opened the driver’s side door and yanked Drew out. She dragged him onto the front lawn. Drew struggled but he couldn’t get free. Venge didn’t look even half strong enough to pull him around how she did, but Drew felt as if she hadn’t only grabbed his body but had reached inside it and latched onto some intangible, essential part of him.

  The front door of the house swung open.

  Impenetrable darkness filled the entry. An odor of burning drifted out on a wave of heat and haze. A musty, earthy scent followed, and then the doorway exhaled stray winds.

  Grudge smiled. “See? Father doesn’t even know we were gone.”

  “I’m so hungry.” Venge looked at Drew and parted her lips, uncovering her teeth.

  “There’s no time.” Nameless pointed east. Glimmers of dawn already brightened the sky, deepening the silhouettes of trees and houses. “Drew made us late. We have to go while the door’s open.”

  “No. I’m hungry, and I want him,” Venge said.

  “Then you shouldn’t have argued so much about which way to go,” Grudge said. “Now the sun’s almost rising.”

  “You argued too. Both of you! And you let him take us the wrong way. If you’d listened to me, we could’ve gone to the cemetery and gotten here in plenty of time.” Venge pressed Drew against the ground and knelt on top of him. Her mouth widened; her teeth protruded as if they might pop loose from her jaw. “I’m going to eat.”

  “No!” Drew shouted. “Stop!”

  Grudge pulled Venge away and spilled her onto the lawn. “Me first!”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Drew said.

  Nameless shoved Grudge aside with Venge and bared her teeth.

  “Because small crimes get punished too,” she said.

  “What did I do?” Drew said.

  “What you did, what you didn’t do, what you’re going to do, it’s all the same thing. You weren’t there when we needed you. You let us go. You let us die, Father.” Nameless slapped Drew. “You let us fall into the darkness. You’ll do it again and again and again.”

  “Please,” Drew said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You think helping us tonight makes up for anything? You think it makes it better?”

  Nameless’s fingers dug into Drew’s chest. Her nails tore his shirt and stabbed his skin.

  “You’ll stand there and stare into the blackness one day. I know you will, because you could see us, and we could see you. Who can say what will happen when that day comes?”

  Her head jolted sideways. At first, Drew thought she was leaning in to bite him, but her head bobbed as if her neck was broken, and then it snapped back into place. The raw streak of scarred skin on her necked peeked out from beneath her choker. Grudge knelt down beside h
im; blood streamed from the scars on her wrists and dripped off her hands. A trickle of blood and foamy, white saliva trailed from the corners of Venge’s lips. Nameless lifted Drew until her teeth were inches from his neck. Her mouth split so wide and looked so deep, Drew thought she might decapitate him with a single bite. He thought of the bridge and the darkness over the side and that if he jumped, he would only be breaking a machine, a construct of organic gears, tubes, and wires that would scatter on the ground and wait to be collected and repaired. But that wasn’t right, that wasn’t true, and there was something horrible waiting down there in the darkness. He thought of Leah and Gabby, their faces drawn and haunted like the faces of Carmine Price’s children. Or, worse yet, Leah and Gabby standing on that bridge by themselves like the three sisters he’d stopped to help. A reservoir of darkness he’d barely known was inside him broke. It leaked out and stained his thoughts. Nameless seemed to savor the exact moment.

  A fierce burst of heat and wind blew down from the open door of the house with a sound like a long, low growl. Shocked, Nameless glanced at the open door. The odor of burning intensified and mingled with the stench of something old and rotten, something long dead.

  “No,” Nameless said. “Not yet!”

  “We’re sorry, Father!” Grudge said. “We didn’t mean to stay out all night. It was so hard to find our way home.”

  “They made me go with them!” Venge said. “I didn’t want to, but they made me!”

  Nameless let go of Drew and dashed toward the door. “Please! Don’t punish us. We made a mistake, that’s all. We promise it’ll never happen again. Give us another chance!”

  Grudge and Venge followed their sister, rushing to the house.

  Drew wriggled onto his belly. He rose onto hands and knees in time to see the first ray of morning sunlight break through the trees and touch the gaping black entrance of the house. It lit up the saddle and crept inside, and then the door slammed shut while the sisters were still several steps from the front porch. A burst of shadow erased the dawn twilight, leaving Drew blind for a moment. From inside the house, a low, deep sound reverberated. Laughter. Then the stink of the place faded. Drew’s sight returned. His mind cleared, and his headache subsided. Where the sisters had been running stood three gnarled and stunted trees bowed toward the house. Their branches were scattered with torn, black leaves. On the smallest tree fluttered the weathered remnants of a knit shawl. The others bore gnarled scars in their bark. They looked like they’d been growing forever out of the cracked front path. In the light of the rising sun, the trees cast strange, moving shadows that seemed to stretch toward the house’s front door.