Bank Owned

by J. Joseph Wright

  He grumbled when she found him, lumped in bed, a face sticking out of the sheets. He was cold, even in the Indian summer they were having, and didn’t want to get out of bed. Angie’s persistence, though, along with her mention of the room beneath the cellar, got him up.

  “What do you mean you went down there? You moved the shelves and opened that door? The hidden door?”

  “Yes, yes!” she took his hand and had to drag him. It didn’t take much more cajoling after that, though. After that, he dominated the conversation.

  “So you saw what was in there?” he kept asking her. “You know what’s down there?”

  “I saw it, Brian!” she was in the lead as they rushed down to the basement “I saw it all…it’s so wonderful!”

  “Wonderful?” his head began to spin. “You really think so? You think it’s wonderful?”

  She stopped before they reached the hidden door. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

  He felt dirty all of the sudden, like he needed to scrub himself with Comet. “You…something’s wrong with you…you’re sick.”

  “Sick? What do you mean?” she couldn’t understand what he was talking about. She waited for a response, which Brian didn’t want to contribute, so she gave him a confused shrug and descended, quickly and decisively, into the darkness.

  “Angie! Wait!” he went after her. The staircase shimmied and shook. They both thought it would come down and bring them with it. Neither cared particularly. Angie wanted to show Brian he had nothing to be afraid of, and Brian just wanted to get his wife the hell out of there. At the bottom of the steps, both of them out of breath, they each got the surprise of a lifetime. Nothing. Bare wood walls, dirt floor, open rafters, a breeding ground for bugs. Nothing else.

  Angie stumbled in the dimness, searching for the table of diapers and washcloths, rooting for the cabinet of stuffed animals, probing for the bassinet which was no longer there. Brian, in a similar state of confusion, turned a full circle, his eyes used to the dark by now, and not spotting a thing from earlier. No medieval instruments. No wheel of torment. No hanging razor wire or kinky sex toys. Nothing.

  “Where is it?” she felt the exposed two by fours. “Where did it all go?”

  Despite the absence of provocative items, Brian still harbored suspicion. “Where did all what go, Angie?”

  “Everything that was in here?”

  “So you’re admitting you knew what was in here. Did you have anything to do with it? Was it yours?”

  She looked at him. “At first I thought you did it. To surprise me.”

  “What!” his face felt hot. “Don’t be disgusting!”

  “Disgusting?” she’d had enough of his attitude. “How can you say that?” she studied him closer. He was shaking, with anger or fear, she couldn’t tell. “What did you see in here?”

  “What did you see?”

  “It was a…” she scanned the empty space once more. “A nursery.”

  “Nursery?”

  “Yeah. A baby’s room,” she filled with warmth at the thought. “It was magnificent. Everything a baby would need. Blankets, a crib, a changing table, stuffed animals,” she gave him a pleading look. “Oh, Brian, it was beautiful,” she returned to her confused search. “I just don’t understand where it all went.”

  “A nursery,” he repeated, trying to understand. “Impossible.”

  “Why? Brian, what did you see down here?”

  He turned away. No way could he, or would he, talk about it.

  “Brian?” she refused to back down. “Tell me what you saw.”

  He found it unbearable to look at her, and just as unbearable to speak a word. Confusion turned to fear, then fear to anger. He backed away from her, feeling for the staircase behind him. When he found it, he went up, slowly, carefully.

  “Brian? What is it?” she followed, aware of the dark, suddenly. “What are you thinking?”

  “Something’s going on around here,” he said. “Something really fucked up.”

  11.

  “So, you want your usual?” Betty flashed her best sunrise smile, despite wanting to do the exact opposite. She remembered the girl in the Lexus, the one who’d bought the Castle. How could she forget? That poor girl and her husband were all Betty thought about since the second they’d met.

  “Huh?” Angie heard the woman. She just wasn’t listening. Too much on her mind.

  “Small, nonfat half caf vanilla hazelnut cappuccino?”

  “Oh,” she shook away the haze in her head, appreciative to see a friendly face. “You know what? No. Gimme a large…full fat…and load it with caffeine this time,” she spied the baked goods lined up in a transparent plastic bin. “And one of those bagels, too. Smear it with cream cheese, would ya?”

  “With pleasure,” Betty giggled. “Treating yourself this morning, are you?” she got to work on Angie’s order. “Good. Indulge yourself once in a while. Nothin’ wrong with that, I always say.”

  Angie peered into the little Coffee Hutch. It seemed empty except for Betty. No omnipresent and foreboding husband around to squelch any free talk.

  “Betty?” she read from the nametag. “You seemed a little…disturbed by something the last time I was here. Do you remember?”

  Betty felt her pulse quicken. Her palms became moist instantly. “I-I don’t think so,” she was a terrible liar, and everyone knew it. Angie wasn’t fooled.

  “I told you where I lived, remember? The Castle? I just…I wanted to know. Why were you so, well, disturbed? It was like you wanted to say something.”

  Betty inhaled sharply. She thought if she was quick, and if she talked quiet enough…but there was no way. The young woman’s car was running, and she had to speak louder than she wanted. She had to break the silence, though, so she leaned out the drive-up window.

  “There is something—” Betty knew she’d been caught the second Earl stepped around the shack. His stern breath and clenched jaw told her all she needed to know.

  “My wife’s got nothin’ to say about no Castle,” Earl put himself between the Lexus and the Coffee Hutch. “This is a quiet community. Respectable, hardworkin’ folks. We don’t need no city folk comin’ in here causin’ problems.”

  Normally, Angie would have told the old geezer to shove it where the sun don’t shine and peel off without her coffee. But something in Betty’s look. “Mister, I don’t want any trouble. It’s just that…it’s my house. Strange things have been going on, and I thought maybe your wife knew something about—”

  “We don’t know nothin’ about nothin’!” he banged his hammer on the shack’s aluminum siding. That made Angie put the car into gear and do exactly what her first instinct had told her to do. Get the hell out of there. Before she could step on the gas, Betty stopped her with a holler.

  “Miss! Miss!” she held out a paper cup and little white bag containing the bagel and cream cheese. She gave Angie an expectant expression, impossible to ignore. Angie glared at old Earl and he glared at her as she claimed her order. She placed the coffee in the dash holder and let the sack drop on the seat. “I put the receipt in the bag,” Betty emphasized the word, ‘receipt,’ and held her breath, hoping the young lady would find the note she’d scribbled.

  Have urgent info on your house. Must speak to you in private, she’d written, and then left her cellphone number with an additional message: Call me. Tonight. URGENT!

  She caught Earl’s disapproving stare.

  “Why do you have to meddle, woman? You should know by now what kinda trouble’d come our way if we get in the middle of this.”

  She said nothing, and had no way to mask her feelings from this man after fifty years, so she didn’t even try.

  “I don’t know what kinda ideas you have in your head,” he continued his admonition. “But you just wipe ‘em clean, ya’ hear? You wipe ‘em clean.”

  Betty watched the taillights disappear into the early morning haze and sent her will to the young woman. Please find that note, she tho
ught over and over, crossing her fingers. Find the note.

  Angie let the bagel sit on her passenger seat the whole forty-five miles to work, and only took a sip or two of the cappuccino. She’d lost her appetite, and didn’t have much need for the caffeine. Consequently, the bagel remained untouched, and the receipt with the crucial note on the back never saw the light of day.

  12.

  Wild passion. Heavy breaths, as if air was wine and flesh was food. Steaming. Sweating. Mouths greedy for more. Exploring. Squeezing. Caressing.

  Brain rolled over. The soaking sheet stuck to his back. Perspiration dripped from every pore. His head throbbed. His stomach boiled. But that wasn’t what troubled him. The visions. Hallucinations, he hoped. Though, in a feverish state somewhere between waking and slumber, he had no way to tell what was real and what was dream.

  Whatever the case, whatever the reason, he couldn’t get rid of the thoughts of his wife with another man, the other man. Writhing. Hips grinding. Toes curling. Back arched. Eyes closed. Whimpering. Giggling. She moans lightly as he slaps her. Then again, louder, harder. She grits her teeth and sharpens her stare, glaring and daring the scoundrel to hit her again. Stiffer, harder, punish her with his open palm. Slap…slap…slap! Again and again and again, all to her willing shrieks.

  “NO!” he sat up, aching and stirring and wanting to vomit. Then he did. A stinging surge of bile. He held it in his puffed cheeks like a chipmunk and dashed to the bathroom, spitting into the sink. The acid left his teeth gritty, and he took a giant gulp of water to wash it away. He stared in the mirror, wondering if these terrible nightmares would ever stop. Wondering if Angie was with Matt right now, at work, sitting across from each other, exchanging furtive glances, touching toes below the table. Or maybe he was bending her over his desk, the door left open, just for the danger. Brian heaved into the sink, this time only water came up, and it was still cold.

  WHEN ANGIE GOT HOME, the house was so quiet she thought Brian had left. She checked the garage and found his Mustang. Then she thought maybe he’d gone outside, and stood on the back porch, calling his name—nothing. By that time, she’d gotten worried. Usually she heard him in his office, or the TV blaring from the family room, or caught a whiff of something delicious in the oven. Brian loved to cook, and often surprised her with dinner. But the place was quiet as a library at midnight, and that scared her.

  She checked his office, the kitchen, the living room. “Brian!” she called out to no response, and her heart beat even faster. Before she knew it, she’d checked the entire house. Her room—clothes and shoes and a stationary bike—not there. The other bedrooms—all vacant. With each place she looked, and with each successive failure to locate him, her anxiety grew worse. She tried the basement, even went so far as to open the secret door and shout for him. Again, she received only silence in return. Reluctant to go down by herself, she went upstairs again, and then decided to check the bedroom, hoping he wasn’t actually in bed at six in the evening.

  “Brian?” she peeked her head in. The curtains had been kept closed, the TV was off, and the bed was a wad of sheets and blankets. He was there, though, and didn’t answer. Not that he didn’t want to. He couldn’t. Then she heard him grumble and whine at the same time, and instant alarm bells went off. She knew right away he was sick.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” she rushed to the bed and felt his forehead. Hot as a frying pan. “You’re burning up,” she helped him get straightened out, then got a wet washcloth from the bathroom and put it on his head. He felt better, and wanted to tell her how much he appreciated her. His throat burned so bad, though. All he managed to get out was scratchy, incoherent babble. She told him to save his strength, to just lie down and she’d take care of him.

  The cat, whom she didn’t even see lying there at the foot of the bed, jumped up and followed her down to the kitchen, and let her know under no uncertain terms that she’d missed supper. So Angie opened two cans: tuna pate for Marmalade, and some Campbell’s chicken broth for Brian.

  “Here you go, sweetie,” she scooped a spoonful of cat food into Marmalade’s little bowl, then proceeded to fetch some Nyquil from the cabinet above the fridge, when, from the hallway, she heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet. Unable to breathe, she turned quickly and saw a child, a toddler actually, barely big enough to walk, dressed in only a filthy cloth diaper. It darted past the doorway, straight for the basement. She dropped the medicine bottle on the floor. That didn’t concern her, though. There was a baby in her house. She didn’t know how or why or whose it was, but she’d become convinced of it now. It wasn’t just a noise from behind a wall. This time she saw it. Marmalade saw it, too, and when it had scurried by, she froze, releasing a mouthful of kibble back into her bowl and staring at the hall. Then she began to growl, low and light, and the hair on her back stood up.

  Now more sure than ever, Angie hurried to the basement stairway, and her stomach leapt to her throat when she didn’t find the poor little thing. Her first thought was it had fallen down the steps, and that had her in a mad rush, certain she’d see a tragic sight at the bottom. What she found, though, was an empty landing and an empty room. Except for the hidden door, only it was no longer hidden, but now standing apart from the wall, opened just enough for a small child to get through. As she got closer, she heard a familiar sound—a baby’s laughter.

  13.

  “Hey, Mamma? When’s dinner? I’m starvin’!”

  “Pipe down! It’s comin’!” Betty sat at the kitchen table and rested her weary bones. Her sciatica had been screaming bloody murder all day, and her pain pills weren’t doing the trick anymore. It was that old man doing it, too. Why couldn’t he cook for a change? Then she recalled the last time he tried and abandoned that idea. That man, though—he’d given her just about all she could take. She had a good mind to leave the son of a bitch, to get out of that town. She’d do it, too. First, she had to set things straight. Too long had she sat by, scared to do something.

  Today was the day she would stop this insanity, here and now. She stared at her cellular phone, the one her grandkids got her for Christmas. Those girls sent their poor old gramma ten texts a day, and, with her stiff knuckles, she was finding it harder and harder to peck out the replies. Today, though, she ignored the messages from Cindy and SueAnn. Her only concern was that young woman. Angela Mason was her name. Got it off her credit card.

  With a forlorn sigh, she checked for any incoming calls. Angela had to call. She just had to. Then Betty clenched her jaw and blamed herself for not being bolder. Maybe she should have put the note on the bag. She couldn’t risk Earl seeing it, though. No telling what he would do. That bank had him scared. That house had him scared. The whole thing terrified every soul for a fifty mile radius, and nobody dared speak of it, except for maybe the occasional hushed conversation at Heine’s Café.

  D’jah hear about the family up at the Castle?

  It happened again?

  Yeah. It happened again.

  Whispers. Hushed exchanges. Anxious looks. A terror had its sinuous tentacles spreading throughout that county, a terror so pervasive, no one risked sticking their necks out to try and save whoever owned the Castle. Betty meant to change that. But Earl, he’d try and stop her. She knew he would. He’d do something drastic, too. She just knew it. She saw the way he looked at her. It was like she could read his mind. He’d been giving her those looks for twenty years, now. Those, ‘if I could get away with it, I’d slit her throat,’ kind of looks. Something like this, if he was to catch wind of her plans, she just knew he’d use it as an excuse to bump her off once and for all.

  So she had to be careful, tiptoeing into the foyer and spying on him around the corner. Then she dug the phone out of her sweater pocket and studied the screen again. No calls. Why didn’t she call? Betty trembled. Please, God, let her see that note on the back of her receipt. Please, let her call.

  14.

  With the once-hidden door at the top of the stairs wide open, Angie ha
d just enough light down in the subbasement to see it was empty. No child anywhere, as far as she could tell. She checked the only place a little one could possibly hide—beneath the staircase. Nothing. She began to feel the overwhelming sensation of emptiness in the pit of her stomach, deep down, so powerful and consuming, it threatened to turn her inside out.

  Then the sound of scuffling feet overrode her stilted respiration. Tiny, unmistakable footsteps, one after the other. She scanned the dark recesses, and found indentations on the walls, uneven, like the inside of a cave. Her heart skipped when she looked directly at a tiny face, eyes glistening with sudden joy. Then the small child turned and slipped out of sight, enveloped by shadow, melding into blackness.

  Angie followed to the spot where the child had disappeared and found yet another doorway, concealed well in a rocky cranny. She barely perceived steps, leading down, into impossible darkness. She wished right then and there she had a flashlight, and decided to make a quick trip back up to the kitchen for one. A faint sound changed her mind, even though she couldn’t see, even though she felt an immediate sense of danger. She shook away those thoughts. How could she be thinking of herself when, obviously, a child is somewhere down there? A child who needs her help. Call it a maternal instinct. Or maybe simple stupidity. She didn’t care. She made it a mission to save that little baby. So sweet. So innocent.