by Curran, Tim
“It was easy. He was all alone.”
The boogeyman laughed. “Good, good, Tara. Did you get rid of the gun?”
“I threw it in the lake like you said,” she lied.
“Good,” he said. He swallowed a couple times. “Were you scared?”
Oh, he wanted her to be. The sadist inside him demanded it. It would be satisfied with nothing else.
“No. Like I said, it was easy.”
He swallowed again. “But weren’t you… sickened by it?”
“No,” she lied. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing what it had done to her. How it made her feel far less than human. The way he must have felt every time he looked in the mirror and cringed in horror at what was looking back at him. “After what you left in my kitchen, I doubt I can be sickened.”
“But that wasn’t me, it wasn’t…” he started to say, then caught himself. She could nearly hear his lips being pressed in a tight white line to keep from saying anymore. “You played the game. I knew you would.”
“No, you didn’t. You hoped I would.”
“Listen to me, Tara—”
“No, I don’t want to listen to you. I want to listen to my sister. That was part of the bargain, part of the game. Put her on the phone now. You have nothing to fear. I told you I wouldn’t bring in the police. I haven’t. There’s no tap on this line. Let me speak to my sister.”
“All right, Tara.”
There was a sound of the phone being jogged around, muffled, then: “Tara… Tara… please do what he says… I’m all right… but… but he’ll kill me if you don’t do what he says—”
“Lisa!”
“That’s all you get.”
“I want my sister back.”
“And you’ll get her back.”
“When?”
“When the game is finished. A day or two. That’s all.”
Tara felt positively unhinged by hearing her sister’s voice. She had been weakened by it, the wind sucked out of her. It was only through sheer determination that she was able to continue. “A day or two. No more. Then the game is done.”
“Of course. Just play the game, Tara. Play the game.”
He hung up.
42
After the call, Tara was nearly finished.
She had been feeling stronger… or something in her had. But the sound of Lisa’s voice was just too much. She was ecstatic to hear her, even under such duress, but part of her was thinking that it was probably the worst thing possible for it had seriously depleted her energy, sapped some necessary thing in her that kept her going, undermined the grip she had on it all and the strength to carry out whatever horror came next.
But what it really did was made her feel human again.
Made her feel like a woman who was in dangerous straits, walking some precarious tightrope over a pit of flame. She was in this alone with no back-up and no earthly hope of the same and she was doubting her ability to see it through. Already, what she had done… dear God, it was horrible. She was wounded by it both psychologically and spiritually and she would carry the scars for the rest of her life. How could you pretend life after something like that? Even if she got Lisa out of this nightmare… what about herself? What about Tara? Could she possibly hope to go on? Would she even want to? Or was she just being selfish even contemplating something like that.
She did not know.
She only knew that as she laid there on the kitchen floor, naked and cut and crusted with her own blood, that she needed to cry. The anguish swelled up inside her chest until it ached… but no tears would come.
Nothing.
She sat up, back against the refrigerator. Carefully, she removed the Band-Aids from her raw, gnawed fingertips. Then she began to chew them, the pain exploding brightly in her nerve endings and sweeping the rubbish from her mind. She bit and chewed until the pain made her cry out, until hot sweet blood was in her mouth. Blood that she sucked and swallowed.
I’m just a woman, she thought. I can’t go through with all this. I’m just a person. I’m just a human being.
And another voice in her mind, not her own, simply said: Not anymore, you’re not.
43
By candlelight there was time to play.
Worm decided her dolls weren’t being bad, so she crept into her secret room. Henry had told her years ago it had been called a coal bin back when people burned coal. Now it was just a shadowy room in the cellar with a creaking wooden door, a dirt floor, and stone walls that were draped with ancient feathery-looking cobwebs. It smelled of dank earth, crumbling stone, and age.
This was Worm’s place.
Henry said it could be her secret place.
Worm could remember that sometimes Henry would get mad at her for things she had done and he would lock her in the secret room in the darkness. No candles. Just the blackness that seeped from the walls like tar. Worm would huddle in the corner, wrapped in the cerecloth of night while things skittered over her legs and arms. Sometimes they nipped her. Sometimes Worm would catch them, scuttling leggy intruders, and squish them between her fingers.
Sometimes she would eat them.
In the darkness, alone, but never really alone, Worm would hum songs and whistle and listen to the noises in the walls. There were always noises in the walls like things were living in there, scratching and crawling things.
Rats.
Maybe they were rats.
But Henry hadn’t done that to her in a long time because she was always good and did what he told her. Henry liked that. Henry would not hurt her or shut her away if she was good. He told her she was a good girl. A pretty girl. That he loved her very much, but that their love was secret. Ssshhh. Secret. Just between you and me.
But he never, ever plays with you anymore. He’s always too busy with other things. No games. No stories. No chats. Not like he used to. Not like he used to when you would play corpses and paint your faces white and put the black under your eyes and the red lipstick on your mouths. Never, never anymore hiding amongst the stones or digging in the old crypts and taking the people from the boxes and having tea parties with them and dances.
No, now you have to play alone.
Worm had not played with her dolls for several nights because they had been bad, very bad. So bad that she had to punish them. Naughty things. What they had asked of her and where they wanted to be touched. A mother didn’t touch her babies like that.
Bad, bad dolls! Now I’ll have to punish you like Henry punishes me! It’s going to hurt and you’re going to cry! See? See what you’re making Mother do to you… like this… like this… bad, bad babies…
There was a little dirty table in the corner with little dirty chairs pulled up to it. The surface was scuffed, yellowed, terribly filthy. There were dishes on it. Plastic dishes and a tea party setting that Henry had gotten for her.
Sometimes she let her dolls sit at the table.
But not lately.
They had been bad.
Now they were buried under the dirt floor.
The candle threw a grainy yellow-orange illumination in the secret room. Distorted shadows leaped and jumped. Worm liked to watch the light. Sometimes it formed shapes she recognized, shapes like people she could talk to. Kneeling on the earthen floor, wearing nothing but a poorly-fitting yellow dress that was faded and soiled with dark stains, she pressed her fingers into the dirt.
It was cool and moist.
Only she knew where the graves of her dolls were.
She began to dig in the dirt with grubby, blackened fingers. She scooped out handfuls of damp earth, liking the feel and smell of it. Sometimes she pressed the earth to her face so she could breathe in its aroma. It excited her. Made her dig deeper, worms threading between her fingers, soil packed up under her splintered nails.
She touched something cold.
Dirdree.
Dirdree was one of her dolls. Worm slowly scraped away the dirt until she could make out the body, arms and legs
and head of the doll, still clumped with dirt. She brushed and brushed and there was Dirdree. Grunting, Worm pulled her up from her grave.
Dirdree grinned at her, naughty thing.
“Did you think mummy forgot about you, my darling Dirdree?” Worm said.
The doll said nothing. She just grinned.
Worm knew that Dirdree was not a very pretty doll. Her skin was too yellowed and too wrinkled, her head shaped like a shriveled gourd. Hair that was a faded red sprouted from the top and fell to her shoulders. But it was patchy and there were great bald spots where Worm needed to glue new hair. Setting her aside, Worm dug up Lazy Baby who was fat and round and soft to the touch. Then she dragged Billy No-No from his grave. Happy then, she clutched the dolls to her, aware of the insects that infested them but paying them no mind. Dolls seemed to attract bugs and worms.
“Do you want to have a tea party, babies?”
They said nothing, of course, but that’s how it was. Good dolls did not talk back and when they did Worm had to punish them. Sometimes she pinched them and sometimes she hit them. When she was really angry, she would bite them. There were other things, too. Things she did not like to think about. Henry said that the dolls were special and they must never be taken from the secret room. Never, ever. Like Worm herself they were not allowed out of the house, though sometimes Worm liked to imagine how they would look sitting outside in the sunshine and what people would say when they passed and looked upon her pretty little dolls.
But that could never happen.
Henry wouldn’t like it.
Besides, Worm did not like the sunshine.
She set her dolls at the table and pushed their chairs in. It was going to be a very nice tea party and Worm liked to imagine that they were in a big fine house and it was raining outside, just like in the books Henry sometimes read her. That her dolls were not dirty and neither was she. No, no, they were fine girls and fine boys in fine dresses and suits. But it wasn’t true and she knew it. Billy No-No’s suit was black and dusty, patches of mildew growing up the sleeves and collar. In fact, they grew right up Billy No-No’s face like moist fur.
Worm knew she would have to scrape that off.
Lazy Baby had a white, frilly dress on but it was very badly stained, torn and speckled with mold. Not very pretty for a round pretty baby like her. And Dirdree… well, her dress had been a very lovely purple velour when Henry first bought her home, but now it was almost black like the skin of a rotten plum.
Billy No-No kept falling forward, his face striking the table and leaving a very messy stain.
“Stop that!” Worm told him. “Don’t you see the mess you are making? Bad boy… why must you always be a bad boy?”
She set him up again, settled him into his chair and gave him a sharp pinch on the neck and a scrap of something came away with her fingers. She flicked it aside.
“Now, babies, today is the day that we have a nice tea party and drink our tea like ladies and gentlemen,” Worm told them. “First, I will pour the tea.”
She filled each of their cups with pretend tea from the plastic teapot. In her mind, the tea steamed. It was good and the babies liked it very much. She helped them drink until their cups were empty. Then she showed them how she could dance around the table while she sang a song that Henry had taught her. It was all great fun.
Until Dirdree ruined everything.
Worm caught her sticking her tongue out at Billy No-No. Then she said the most awful thing in the most awful whispering voice: “Punished! You’re going to get punished! Pull out your stuffing! Pull out your belly-stuffing and chew it up, chew it up, chew it up!”
“Dirdree!” Worm said, very crossly. “What did you say?”
“Nothing!”
“You did!”
“No! It was Lazy Baby! Lazy baby said it!”
But that wasn’t so because Lazy Baby couldn’t talk. Lazy Baby was a good girl because she just sat there, head hanging to the side and no words came from her mouth. Oh, she knew how to talk, but Worm had soon put a stop to that because Lazy Baby said the most terrible things, so Worm sewed her lips shut.
So this is how she knew it wasn’t Lazy Baby.
It was Dirdree.
Bad Dirdree.
“What did you say, Dirdree?”
“I won’t tell you because you’ll do bad things to me!”
Worm flew into a rage and yanked Dirdree from her seat and threw her to the ground. She hit her and scratched her and bit her, yanking and pulling on her and, oh dear, look at that, will you?
Dirdree’s head had come off and rolled into the corner.
Billy No-No screamed.
“Enough of that,” Worm told him. “Mother can fix her up. Bad little girl.”
Dirdree’s head giggled in the corner, then it spoke: “We want a new friend, Mother. Why don’t you bring us a new friend to play with?”
Worm thought that was a good idea, but only Henry knew where to get dolls and he told Worm she must never go looking for dolls herself.
“There’s only us, Dirdree. We must play together.”
“There’s Lisa.”
“No, Henry would not like that.”
“Get her!” Dirdree said. “We can play funny games with Lisa.”
Well, if Henry didn’t find out it would be okay. Lazy Baby liked the idea and was giggling behind her stitched mouth. Billy No-No was chattering his teeth in delight.
“Well…”
“Please, Mother, Lisa is so lovely… show us how lovely she is…”
Worm said she would think about it. Luckily, she knew how to sew and stitch. She had seen Henry do it and sometimes he let her help. Worm got her needle and thread and began to sew Dirdree’s head back on, humming as she did so. She had sewn her babies up before. Sometimes she pulled Billy No-No’s arms and legs off and did the same with Dirdree, then switched them, sewing them in place so Dirdree had boy’s legs and Billy No-No had girl arms. It was very funny.
Lazy Baby liked that game best.
When Dirdree’s head was stitched back into place, Worm wiped things off her hands onto her soiled dress.
The tea party was ruined.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
There was Lisa.
Dirdree was grinning again. “I like Lisa! Bring her to us, Mother! She’s so lovely! I want her to be our special friend so I can love her… and bite her…”
44
Tara.
Tara.
Fucking cunt. Fucking whore. Fucking bitch. She was taking the fun out of the game and she didn’t even care! She was supposed to be horrified and broken after killing Spears… why wasn’t she? WELL? Why the hell wasn’t she?
Henry paused, leaning against the vault door, his ring of keys trembling in his hand. He had to calm himself. Being calm was so important in life. If you were not calm, you made mistakes and as Elise had told him again and again he could not make mistakes. He stared out across the graveyard, finding solace and warm contentment in the shadow-draped monuments and leaning headstones. He listened to the creaking tree limbs high above, the leaves blown against marble faces.
Still… that Tara. That damn Tara.
I will keep my promise. And you had better keep yours.
Who did she think she was to make demands? He had her sister. He held the cards. He had the power. She was his puppet. His pawn. His plaything. Yet, like the miserable bitch she was, she was making a blind grab for authority. Instead of being broken and cringing, she was rising up out of her shell, trying to confuse him with her vile feminine dominance. Talking to him like that. Like… like she was his mother. Like he would listen to what she said and obey like a good son, a good dog, a sniveling little worm.
In the back of his head, he could hear his mother laughing.
Grinding his teeth, he tried his keys on the vault door, scraping each one across the rusting metal for purchase. He went through seventeen of them before he found one that worked.
I want my sister back, a
live and unharmed.
(fuck you, witch! i’ll give you the little cunt in a bag, do you hear me? in a fucking BAG)
I will not go back on my promise and you better not go back on yours.
(shut up!)
Because if you do.
(SHUT UP!)
God help you.
The door swung open with an unpleasant groaning of metal fatigue that sounded impossibly loud as it echoed through the marble forest. The breath of the vault was cool and earthy, a scent of wilted flowers and autumn leaves and deep, dark, subterranean decay. He crossed the stone floor, thinking that this was the sort of place to bring Tara. Get the uppity little bitch in here and lock the door, push her down on a slab.
“No,” she would say. “Please… please… not here, Henry.”
But Henry would only laugh coldly at her fear, her unease, her horror in this chamber of the dead. He would approach her slowly and she would shudder and he would giggle with a scraping, rasping sound that would echo through the vault, the music of the necropolis.
Yes, that’s what he would do.
He could see it all in his mind now with a frightening clarity.
Taking up his crowbar, he approached the berth of ELIZABETH SAUNDERS, 1997—2012. He caressed the smooth brass faceplate, feeling a vague electric thrill that was nearly erotic. He gasped. He slid the tip of the crowbar under the lip of the plate and popped it free after some exertion. It clattered to the floor.
“Yes, Tara. Here. In this place. Witnessed by a host of the dead.”
She would beg for mercy but there was no mercy for cunts. They asked for IT and they got IT. Uppity Tara Coombes with her slutty little sister. Tara would begin to sob. She would claw frantically at the iron vault door and
(the box the wooden box under your fingers pull it out)
it would do her no good. “Come over here, Tara. On the floor. I want you on the floor.” But she would cower as rats grown fat on coffin litter scratched in the corners and a wind of mourning blew across the cemetery in the tortured voices of lost souls. “Please, Henry… please…” Oh yes, because that’s how they always got when it came down to it, when they
