House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  He turned on the water in the bathtub hard, as hot as he could get it, and then he went back into the bedroom.

  She lay where he had hit her, head turned to one side. He reached down to check her pulse. It was strong. He bent down in a weight-lifter's crouch and lifted her, grunting, and brought her into the bathroom.

  The mirror was steamed. He checked to make sure the water was not too hot before laying her in the tub.

  He soaked the towel in hot water and began to rub at the filth that covered her body. He had to stop frequently, turning his head away to gag, but he kept at it, starting with her feet and moving gently upward. He let the putrid water drain and refilled the tub. He resumed his washing until the water became filthy again and then repeated the process.

  When he was finished, he filled the tub once more with a few inches of warm water and rolled the towel and pillowed her head with it. He stood and looked down at her. A shiver ran through him. He had seen her naked only four or five times, when they had made love up at his parents' cabin over holiday weekends. He had seen her plenty of times in bathing suits. But she had never been this skinny. He had seen her a little less than a week ago, and he knew she hadn't looked like this then. Her bruised ribs showed unhealthily below her breasts. Her cheeks were hollow, her arms overly thin. He could almost curl his thumb and forefinger around her ankle. Her body was covered with scores of black-and-blue marks, scratches, half-healed cuts and gouges. In places there were neat lines of round little holes; it looked as though the tines of a fork had been pressed into her. She looked like an inmate from a prisoner of war camp.

  “Jesus, Laura, what happened to you?” he asked. He wanted to cry. He noted with a wince the bruise that was forming over her lip on the right side where he had hit her. He left her soaking in the tub and returned to her bedroom. The thought occurred to him that he should call the police.

  But he hesitated. What would the Canadian police say, finding him here at three in the morning, half drunk, telling wild stories about someone trapping her in her own apartment for a week and turning her into someone who only wanted to eat and have sex with her own shit . . .

  He took a leg of the broken chair and checked through the rest of the apartment. As he had thought, whoever it was had left. He stared hard at the open front door for a moment, but then he closed and locked it, put the chain across it, and went back to the bedroom.

  He straightened the bed as best he could, finding some clean linens in a closet in the hall. The pillows were covered with filth, so he fashioned one from a clean pillowcase stuffed with what clean clothes he could find. He gathered the plates and glasses to bring to the kitchen, noting with disgust that the yellow liquid in one glass appeared to be urine.

  The kitchen was a mess, also: drawers pulled out, the refrigerator wedged open. A foul stench issued from inside. He kicked the chair holding the door open aside and let it close. The kitchen sink was stained, and next to it he saw a paring knife jammed deep into the wooden countertop. Something was carved deep into the wood, the etched grooves stained in what looked like blood:

  SOON

  LOVE, M&P

  He felt a chill. He left the dishes he had brought in the sink and went back to the bathroom.

  She hadn't stirred. He had found a single clean towel in the linen closet, and he lifted her from the tub and carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the end of the bed. He patted her dry, wincing at the sour smell that still impregnated her hair as he toweled it dry. Then he put her in a relatively unsoiled nightgown and laid her on the makeshift pillow. He drew the sheets up over her and left the room.

  The next two hours he spent cleaning the apartment. He started with the kitchen, sponging rancid milk from the floor, scraping broken tomato sauce jar fragments, along with bits of dried onion and stale bread into a pile, which he then gathered into the unused garbage pail in the broom closet. He piled all the utensils and glasses and dishes into the sink and let them soak in hot water.

  The living room showed less evidence of neglect; the furniture had been moved around, and there were stains on the rug from an overturned bottle of red wine. One leaf of the dining room table had been cracked off, as if someone had sat on it, and one of the chairs was missing its back.

  He was cleaning the tub in the bathroom when he heard Laura stir. He walked slowly to her bedroom door and looked in. She was sitting up on her elbows, looking around her as if lost. When she saw him, her eyes widened.

  “Peter?” she said in a very small, unsure voice.

  He entered and sat on the bed next to her. The glaze was gone from her eyes. She looked like someone suffering the effects of a hangover. He studied her face, waiting for her to speak.

  “How—?”

  “You don't remember anything that happened tonight, Laura?”

  She shook her head tentatively.

  “None of it?”

  ''No . . .”

  “Did someone break into your apartment? Has someone been keeping you here against your will?”

  Her memory was striving to inform her. “No,” she said, finally.

  “What have you been doing the last five days, Laura? And there was someone in this apartment tonight.” He was trying very hard to keep an accusatory tone from his voice.

  “Peter, I don't—” But then a spark of memory ignited and her face was transformed.

  “Oh, Peter, yes.” She tried to rise from the bed. He held her down by the arms, bending over her.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  “Tell me what's been going on,” he said, angrily.

  “It's M and P.” A light had filled her eyes.

  “Do you know how I found you tonight?” Peter said, deliberately. “Did you know you've been living in your own feces for days, possibly since I talked to you? That you haven't eaten anything since God knows when? I found you in that clothes closet''—he pointed, a suppressed rage evident in his shaking fingers—“covered with your own shit. Do you know any of this?”

  He let go of her arms and stared at her, trembling.

  “Peter, you've got to listen to me,” she said. She wanted to rush on, but she composed herself. She touched him tenderly on his arm and held her fingers there. “Peter, you have to believe me. I don't remember anything of what's happened. All I know is that M and P are there. They can be reached. There was a message—”

  “You mean those scratch marks in the kitchen?” he said scornfully.

  “There's more,” she continued. She put her hand back on his arm. “Please listen, Peter. I've been told I can see them.”

  “Who—” A sudden suspicion invaded his thoughts. “Has Brennan been up here?”

  She shook her head. “No. I called him, but he was away.” Her voice became vague. “His machine took a message . . .”

  “Then who told you?”

  She took a deep breath. “Someone. I'm not really sure. But there was contact with something, that same night you called me. I thought it was my aunt, but it wasn't. Something that promised me I would be able to reach them. A house in New York—”

  “Jesus Christ! What's wrong with you? Don't you see what's been going on here? Are you that blind? Something's wrong with you, Laura—don't you see that?”

  The light in her eyes was constant, unfluctuating. “Peter, I'm telling you, this force contacted me, and—”

  For the third time that night, he hit her. Not as hard this time, but his guilt was worse because he knew it was as much out of frustration as necessity.

  She sat straight in bed, stunned, putting her hand to bier cheek. She stared at him, and then abruptly the light softened in her eyes and she began to cry.

  “Oh, Peter,” she wept. She looked at the room, the open door of the closet and what lay on its floor, the stains, the broken furniture, the torn clothes. She registered the distinct, faint uncleanliness of her own body, her own hair.

  He put his arms around her, and she cried for a long time.

  When she had stopped
crying, he held her tight and then laid her back against the pillow and held her hands. Her eyes were swollen red with tears.

  “I'm going to take you home,” he said quietly. “Something strange happened here. But even if it's all in your mind, we're going to fight it. I'm going to make you well again.”

  She nodded, on the edge of renewed tears.

  “I know how you feel about your parents,” he said gently. “But what they did to you was wrong. They were selfish, Laura. They loved you so much they wanted to make sure you never left them, so they told you things that weren't true. You know there's nothing wrong with your foot. They told you that to tie you to them.” He leaned very close to her. “But they're dead, Laura. They're gone. And I'm here to take care of you and make you well.”

  “Peter,” she said, in a whisper, beginning to cry softly again.

  He looked deeply into her eyes. “You'll let me take you home?”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Good.”

  The front door slammed.

  “What the—”

  He distinctly heard the chain being slid in its socket, then the front door was opened again and then slammed, very loud. Laura looked at him fearfully. “Peter—”

  He was already up, finding the broken chair leg he had wielded on his earlier search of the apartment.

  “Peter, please—”

  He walked out into the hallway and looked at the front door.

  It was closed and bolted.

  He walked slowly to it, noting from a distance that the chain was in its slide and locked, just as he had left it.

  The lights blinked out. He felt a light touch across the knuckles of his hand holding the chair leg.

  He swung at the unseen presence.

  He heard a faint brush of laughter in his ear, felt fingers slide like a spider web across his wrist.

  The front door flew wide open. He saw the chain tapping against the door edge. A rectangle of outside light spilled into the apartment.

  There was a touch on his wrist and cheek, simultaneously. He heard laughter in one ear, then the other.

  In the near dark, he was pushed, hard, toward the open doorway.

  He turned. No one was pushing him. Laura stood in her bedroom doorway. Her nightgown had been removed. She was smiling, the hard bright shine of madness back in her eyes, her hands cupped between her spread legs as she urinated on them.

  “Good-bye, Peter,” she said.

  He was pushed by the unseen presence, knocked backward to the front doorway.

  “Laura!” he shouted, swinging the chair leg. It was caught in midair and pulled from his hand. It hung suspended for a moment, then dropped to the floor.

  Peter was pushed out of the apartment and down the hall. Shouting, he turned to see the window he had closed on the way in. It was wide open.

  Laura stood in her open doorway, watching him.

  “Laura! No!”

  Screaming for help, he was pushed past three other apartment doors. Only silence answered.

  Cold night air pushed against his back as he moved toward the open window.

  “Laura, oh, God!”

  The backs of his knees rammed against the window ledge. His feet left the floor as he was forced back and out.

  He fell into the night, screaming, the far-off ripple of the beautiful canal his last glimpse of the world before the ground below threw out its hard arms to embrace him.

  Laura closed, locked, and chained the door. Favoring her right foot, she walked back down the hallway to the bedroom. As she passed the kitchen, drawers slid open, utensils jumping out of them onto the floor. The refrigerator opened. A half-filled container of sour milk tumbled out, spilling the rest of its contents in a cheesy puddle across the floor. Someone laughed in the living room. The furniture was pulled and pushed by unseen hands; a dining room chair lost its back with a splintering crack, and the other leaf of the dining room table buckled and split. In the bathroom, the medicine cabinet hinged violently open, belching lipstick tubes and glass cold-cream jars out into the sink. They broke, mixing a sickening cosmetic cocktail. The tub backed up, pushing drained dirt and vomit into the sink.

  Laura returned to the bedroom closet. She drew her knees up, smearing feces around them, resting her chin on them.

  Suddenly she looked up, with the quick eye-snap of a bird. She smiled.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She rose, left the closet, and began to gather clothes. She took those with the least amount of ruin to them, tossing the rest aside. She put a pair of panties, a bra, a turtleneck shirt, and a pair of jeans, along with a pair of white crew socks and her Reeboks, off to one side.

  There was a blue cloth suitcase under the bed, stained with vomit and feces. She slid it out, opened it, and packed, neatly and carefully.

  When she was finished packing and had closed the suitcase, wiping at the most obvious stains with a discarded blouse, she dressed herself. She straightened her clothes, went to the bathroom and brushed her hair back with her fingers. There was a smudge of human waste over one eye and she toweled it off.

  She brought the suitcase to the front door, found her jacket on the floor next to the sofa and put it on. She found her bag with her wallet in it and slung it over her shoulder. She found Peter's car keys in his jacket pocket.

  She opened the door, looked into the living room.

  “Yes?” she asked, breathlessly, excited. “You promise?”

  An answer came. Her face radiated happiness. She picked the suitcase up, went out into the hallway, and locked the door, sliding the key underneath, back into the apartment.

  On her way to the elevator—on her way to New York State—she paused to close the open window because the soft night breeze that came in momentarily chilled her.

  10. FALCON!

  There was a big chart on the wall behind Detective Richard Falconi's desk, which he swiveled in his chair to look at ten or twelve times a day. He swiveled to look at it now. It had been handmade on the back of a Bruce Springsteen poster he'd found in the garbage pail in his fourteen-year-old daughter's room (“I never want to see his face again after he left his wife,” she'd said in explanatory indignation), and on it was everything Falconi, and anyone else for that matter, knew about the murderer the Post had called the Games Killer. There were a lot of categories—Physical Description, Modus Operandi, Area of Attack, Psychological Profile, even one titled Games, which listed all the victims by the kind of game they had been playing when they were killed—and though there was a lot of information, including subcategories such as the one under Monopoly that elucidated the progress of the game at the time the Games Killer had lured Marilyn Fagen, age forty-five, widow, mother of two boarding schoolers, resident of the Upper East Side, thought, through unsubstantiated reports, to have occasionally cruised the bars on Second Avenue and to have been open to any sort of sexual activity that might follow a successful prowling expedition away from the game board to the bedroom where he had calmly bound her hand and foot, gagged her, and then beheaded her. Noted for anyone interested, and Falconi was very interested for one reason, the game was about to be won on the next roll by the player using the pewter race car as a playing piece. It had been dusted and there were no prints on it; a partial of Marilyn Fagen's right forefinger had been taken from the other piece, a spinning wheel. How had Marilyn Fagen, hot in the pants as she must have been, waited so long to try to get what she wanted out of him? Was he very handsome, or otherwise alluring, and worth the wait, which he probably had insisted on? Perhaps she could not wait for that final roll, but the killer had been satisfied that it was imminent. He had won the game.

  He had won the game. He always won the game—that was the one solid lead they had after all this time. Otherwise he was nearly invisible; a man who appeared quietly, established a relationship almost invisibly, killed, and went into the ether. Under Physical Characteristics were a couple of possibilities: a homeless man who lived on the benches in
Washington Square Park “thought” he'd seen Harold Moss playing chess a couple of times with a young man in a black shirt—he couldn't remember a face; a deli owner “sort of recalled a man in his thirties or forties” with Marilyn Fagen when she came to buy a loaf of Italian bread the night she was murdered.

  He likes to win. This, Falconi knew, was all he had, and he had written it at the bottom of the chart, underlined twice. HE LIKES TO WIN. Which told him—what?

  Which told him nothing, because everyone he knew liked to win, everyone he'd grown up with in Astoria liked to win at marbles, at stickball, at anything.

  He has to win. Yes—which told him something, because there was a need in him so strong, so all-persuasive, to dominate his opponent, to destroy him, to the point of murdering that opponent after he had been vanquished in mock battle. “This individual takes no prisoners,” Minkowski had told him; and Minkowski was the one he trusted more than all the others. Minkowski played pinochle—and Falconi could attest to the fact that he liked to win at that. “This particular person's behavior is in many ways like that of the black widow spider; though in the black widow's case it is sex and not the playing of games that is the operative area.”

  At this point Minkowski had smiled his Cheshire grin, cluing Falconi that he should divert Minkowski from the lecture he was about to deliver on the relationship between the sex act and the playing of games of any kind, as studied by Friedman and Wallach, 1965, and Borgen and Robbins, 1973; a diversion that Falconi had accomplished by saying, “Just stick to the point, Mark.”

  “Also,” Minkowski had gone on, “it is the female black widow that does the killing, and in this case, the male is the one who kills. But as you know, the female black widow kills her partner after the sex act has been completed. It is not enough that she dominate him, as she does physically, being four times his size; she must perform the ultimate domination of him, murdering him afterward.”

  Falconi, feeling a little foolish, as he always did when asking a question of Minkowski or any of the other psych people, feeling like a schoolboy, said, “So why does he kill them if he's already beaten them?”