The Atrocities

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  The housekeeper studies my face for a few seconds and then nods. “Of course, miss. I can write that down for you, only you should know the Everses don’t like to be disturbed after seven in the evening.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  After lunch, I return to my room and discover the zoo animals once again strewn about the floor. Isabella’s photograph lies on my pillow, with her eyes cut out. Chocolate fingerprints stain the bedsheets.

  “Isabella?” I say.

  I peek under the bed and search the adjoining bathroom. Nothing.

  When I call the number Robin supplied me, the phone rings but no one answers. After the beep, I say, “This is Danna. Call me back.”

  I switch over to Isaac’s texts, and for who knows how long, I scroll back in time. He’s sent me a goat wearing a top hat and monocle. He’s sent me a whole family with mullets. He’s sent me a capybara in a tutu? No, that’s a hamster.

  With a mercurial thumb, I scroll back to the present.

  I text, I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN HELP THIS TIME.

  A little voice tells me to sit in bed for a while, and if I fall asleep, I fall asleep.

  Instead, I sit in the uncomfortable armchair. For a few hours, I read, and I wait. An empty Toyota Corolla careens down the busy city street and hits the main character as she fantasizes about seducing her boss. Her body crumples. In her weakened state, a memory awakens inside her of a creature that lived under the floorboards of her grandmother’s house. After a long recovery in the hospital, the main character visits her grandmother and discovers that the sallow creature still lives there. The creature’s form remains nebulous, but I picture him with elongated limbs and a lipless mouth.

  I rub my eyes.

  After pocketing the book, I exit the room and wander the tortuous corridors of the house. I glance into open doorways. Sometimes I say, “Mrs. Evers?” And sometimes, “Isabella?” Every so often, I come across a plastic rat or a broken crayon. Sometimes I stop and shut my eyes tight. I listen for voices, but I can’t hear anyone.

  In time, I make my way outside and sit at the edge of the fountain. An amber butterfly thrashes for survival in the placid water. I relocate her to the freshly cut grass, where her wings rise and fall and rise and fall. I open my book.

  In the novel, the creature promises to grant Evangeline a wish if only she’ll provide him with her pinky toe. He repeats this promise every day for months. Finally, she gives in, and she uses a hedge clipper to sever her flesh. She drops the sacrifice through a hole in the floor, and her wish is never granted. The creature squats in the dark, chewing, trembling with pleasure.

  I look down to find the butterfly immobile on the grass, dead or gathering her strength.

  “Isabella?” I say, to the vacant garden.

  Wind caresses my bare skin as I follow a cobblestone path around the house. Birds burble, cloaked in the leaves above. I pass pillars topped with severed heads made of yellowing stone. Obsidian worms burst through the eyes of the statues, and the insects raise themselves toward the sky, like flowers reaching for sunlight.

  Eventually, I end up in the hedge, shivering beside one of the Atrocities. The boy screams silently on his hands and knees. A round white stone rests on the top of his head, in a crater of fragmented bone. For a moment, he whispers to me, but it’s only the wind in the leaves.

  I call the number again.

  This time, Mr. Evers answers. He says, “My wife is currently indisposed. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  I hang up.

  A little voice tells me I could keep walking. I could find my way out of this maze and I could escape this place.

  Stockton House welcomes me back with an embrace of toasty air. For a few minutes, I stand in the foyer, breathing into my cupped hands. Then I continue rambling through the corridors and stairways and chambers. Soon, sunlight disentangles itself from the house. The brass fixtures above the hall paintings flicker to life, but for the most part the house darkens without interference.

  I move in a sort of foggy trance until a distant clamor pulls me back to my present reality. I follow the sound into a drab, windowless hallway.

  “Hello?” I say.

  The banging stops, and Mrs. Evers says, “Miss V? You gotta get me out of here!”

  I try the door at the end of the hall, but of course it’s locked.

  “They’re gonna get me!” Mrs. Evers says. “They’re coming out of the paintings. I can hear them breathing.”

  “That’s only the wind,” I say, with my hand against the door. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

  “I keep telling Mom to wake up, but she won’t. Why won’t she listen to me?”

  “I don’t know. Keep trying. Keep talking to her.”

  Mrs. Evers doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, “Don’t tell my dad, but I stole the extra keys. I gave them to Princess. I think she’s in the schoolroom or the cottage or somewhere.”

  “Okay.”

  “Princess can protect you from him. She’s not afraid of anybody.”

  I try to force the door open one more time. “I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”

  “Hurry. They’re gonna come out.”

  As I turn away from the door, I can’t help but picture the creature from my novel in the room, crouching low to the floor, gnawing on another toe. I push the thought away.

  “Mom!” Mrs. Evers says, behind me. “Mom!”

  I search Isabella’s room after the schoolroom, and my eyes settle on the stuffed capybara sitting in a flower box, watching over the cottage like a guardian angel. Could this be the Princess Mrs. Evers was referring to? Underneath the animal I find a set of oversized brass keys.

  When I return to the bleak hallway, I find the door to Mrs. Evers’s prison wide open. I step into a dark room devoid of windows and furniture. Angels with patchwork faces glare down at me from the cement walls, and only a mouse-print blanket enlivens the floor. Mrs. Evers is nowhere to be seen.

  I wait, and listen, and no one comes. Nothing happens.

  I leave the brass keys under the blanket, just in case she’s locked in here again while I’m away.

  A few more minutes pass, and then I return to my room to organize my thoughts. A silver serving tray sits on my bedside table along with a handwritten note. Dear Miss Danna, Robin writes, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m watching a movie in town tonight with my friend Michi. She’s a sweet sort of person, only her taste in cinema puts my nose out of joint, as they say. I’ll ask you, Miss Danna, what sort of person designates Waterworld as her favorite movie of all time? Not to be crude, but the man drinks his own urine. I suppose I prefer heroes with a little more decorum. Robin goes on to describe the saffron pilaf and all the other dishes she prepared for me.

  The pilaf tastes pleasant, though somewhat metallic.

  I look at my phone. Isaac has texted back, OF COURSE YOU CAN HELP THEM, CUZ. YOU ALWAYS HELP THEM.

  Even if I find a way to speak with Mrs. Evers again, what do I say? Should I call someone for help? Whom?

  Before I can figure out my next step, I feel myself sinking. This isn’t my medications tugging me gently into sleep. This is a new sensation. This is an invisible claw squeezing me tight, pulling me through my bed into the depths of the earth.

  I try to open my eyes, but the darkness surrounds me, and fills me, and I am lost.

  * * *

  Minutes or hours or days later, a golden fulgor permeates my awareness. When I open my eyes, I observe Mr. Evers sitting at the edge of my bed, polishing his glasses with a bloodred handkerchief.

  I attempt to sit up.

  The man regards me with a melancholic smile. “I fear any attempts to reanimate your body will prove fruitless. Your flesh has already succumbed to the stresses of judgment, and your consciousness will follow before long.”

  “What have you done to me?” I want to say, but what escapes me is a trembling whine.

  The
man squeezes my ankle. “Hush now, Ms. Valdez. Even if you could manage a coherent plea for mercy, your words would fall on deaf ears. I have glimpsed the darkness in your soul, and your fate is now inescapable.”

  I scream for help, and the man forces a rectangle of duct tape over my mouth.

  “You may find this difficult to believe, but I did everything in my power to prevent this moment. In a sense, I consider our present situation as much a testament to my own shortcomings as yours.” He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I vetted you and tested you to the best of my ability. I queried your references extensively. I welcomed you into my home because I came to the conclusion that your soul was unstained, and therefore impenetrable to damnation.”

  He stares at me now without expression.

  “During the last inquisition in the dark room, Molly named you as a champion of sorts, sent here from on high to rescue her from captivity. She wasn’t in her right mind, of course. Nevertheless, her confidence in you and your supposed crusade left me heavy with apprehension. To alleviate my fears, I decided to review the security footage from your room. And it was then, Ms. Valdez, that I discovered the truth about you.” He grabs my leg again, tighter than before. “You enter my realm, and you conspire with my daughter’s spirit to corrupt my wife? We have been nothing but hospitable and generous, and in return you wish to steal away my Molly and fracture my family?”

  He releases me, and he gazes at the arm that rests limp and lifeless at my side. “Like most modern women, your arrogance blinds you to everything but the most superficial of realities. You see a wound on a woman’s chest, and you perceive nothing of the love encapsulated in the mutilated flesh. You understand nothing of this house and our ways. You are a simpleminded creature whose sole function is to wreak havoc on holy bonds and sacred spaces. I would like to let you go, Ms. Valdez, but I’m duty-bound to facilitate in your fall.” He clears his throat. “I do drone on, don’t I? Well. I suppose now is as good a time as any to begin.”

  The man recedes for a moment, and returns with a medical syringe.

  I can feel a hot tear sliding down my face. I try to turn away.

  After he injects the crimson liquid into my arm, the room convulses, and a hairless, faceless woman lumbers through the open door. Her spindly arms slide beneath my neck and knees. Suddenly, a mouth splits her face in two like a wound. She grins. Mucusy insects wriggle their way through her tattered lips.

  When she lifts me into her arms, I scream. I try to scream. She carries me through narrow corridors, and the walls blur past me, as if she’s cantering down a moving sidewalk. Lights flicker. I’m little more than a statue at this point, but somehow I manage to turn my head toward the woman’s face. For a moment, she closely resembles Mr. Evers, with the small glasses and the taciturn eyes. Tufts of mahogany hair sprout from her polished scalp and then recede. Spirals swirl on her forehead.

  Once again, I face the onrushing hallway, and clusters of eyeballs open wide, growing inside the off-white walls. Amidst the eyes, mouths bare their black, craggy teeth.

  I can see Robin crouching at the end of the hall, dropping pale potatoes into a steaming pot. Amber butterflies twitch underneath tight strands of Robin’s hair, attempting to escape. Suddenly, I think of the saffron pilaf and the strange metallic taste. I think of the invisible claw that dragged me deep into the earth.

  “You drugged me,” I say, though with the duct tape over my mouth I can only speak with my thoughts. “You put something in my food.”

  “Yes, miss,” Robin says.

  “Yes, miss,” the mouths in the wall echo. Obsidian worms slither through their ragged lips.

  The housekeeper tosses a pair of tangled carrots into the pot, and I reach out and flick her. She flies backward, as if being pulled by a rope attached to a speeding vehicle. She crashes through a narrow window, effecting an explosion of stained-glass shards and butterfly wings.

  What have I done? How could I even entertain the thought that she would betray me?

  “Call an ambulance,” I say. I try to say.

  “Call an ambulance,” the mouths repeat.

  “Hush now, Ms. Valdez,” the woman from the trumeau says. “There is nothing left for you to say.”

  Wirelike worms reach out from the walls and wind around my ankles and toes. I can feel them snaking up my thighs. Thankfully, the creatures withdraw as the faceless woman hauls me into a familiar hospital room with blanched walls. Shards of volcanic glass smolder on the tiled floor. I search the room for a bed, but I can’t see one.

  “Where is he?” I try to say.

  “Where is he?” the mouths repeat, from afar.

  I manage to turn my head slightly, and my eyes rest on a wound in the wall. Bluish-white veins pulse in the corroded drywall. Pus seeps from the cracks and collects in a pool on the floor. A featherless duck lies in the suppuration, dead or gathering his strength. I should go to him. I should bury him if he’s gone. But I’m still a marionette with slackened strings.

  Before long, a chasm opens in the floor. No, the chasm is a mouth. The woman conveys me into the hole, past rows of bleeding gums and decaying molars. The black worms live here too, thrashing in blood, burrowing into the soft flesh of the walls. The worms stretch out toward my feet, but they’re too slow.

  We travel down the precipitous steps, into the innards of the monstrosity. Soon, a tunnel of whirling fire looms before us. The sight should fill me with dread, shouldn’t it? All I’m experiencing is a disconcerting calmness of mind and body. What’s wrong with me?

  We move through the passage, and I see naked arms piled in the flames. The severed limbs thrash and bend and blister. I see blackened moths drifting to the floor like cinders. When a fiery hand reaches out and brushes against my face, I expect to burn. Instead, I shiver in the cool air, and goosebumps swarm on my skin.

  Further into the tunnel, a small, withered body convulses on a white blanket. His mouth opens wide. His skin ruptures and peels. Even after all these years, I can’t do anything for him.

  No, this can’t be happening. I lower my eyes and I’m still wearing the vermillion cardigan, chartreuse floral dress, thin black belt. I must be awake.

  In another moment, the roiling inferno closes in and swallows me whole.

  * * *

  When I regain consciousness, wisps of smoke slither across my field of vision. I can feel my body shivering, but I still can’t move my arms or legs. Is this death? Is this all that remains of my existence? A little voice tells me this is where I belong. This is what I deserve.

  Slowly, the hazy miasma disperses, and can I make out a girl with big brown eyes and dark curls. She’s no longer the roly-poly imp from the photograph. She stares at me with weary eyes, her features sharp and shrunken.

  “Isabella?” I say. I try to say. What comes out of me is the chthonic wail of a creature living under the floorboards.

  “Don’t worry,” the girl says. “You’ll feel back to normal soon.”

  Black smoke still skulks in my periphery, but the world feels almost real again.

  Isabella sits cross-legged on the cement floor, entertaining herself with tiny stone animals. The dog in her right hand hops over a pyramid of radishes and carrots and parsnips. “Good job,” the girl says as a feeble smile flashes across her face.

  When I try to sit up, the invisible hand presses down on my stomach. I ache as if I’ve just completed a hundred sit-ups.

  “Isabella?” I say. I try to say. “Isabella?” The words finally flow from my lips, though they sound gritty and barbed.

  The girl turns to me, balancing a stone horse on her head.

  “Are you Isabella?”

  “Yeah,” she says. She bows her head slightly, allowing the mustang to slip into her hands.

  My limbs scream at me, but I manage to crawl over and put my arms around the girl. She feels warm. She feels real. I can feel warm tears burning at my eyes.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” I say. />
  “Do you know a way out?” Isabella says. “Albert always tried to find one, but he couldn’t.”

  “Albert?”

  The girl takes me by the hand and leads me deeper into the dank chamber. With every step, I can feel waves of fire and acid rushing up my legs. Bare bulbs hang from the ceiling, and Mr. Evers’s painted angels gaze down on us from the stone walls. One of the portraits we pass resembles Isabella, but with her teeth pushing through her eyelids, and her gummy mouth opening in her neck. In addition to the angels, painted flames cover the walls, replete with burning faces and smoking flesh.

  A man lies motionless in a dark corner of the chamber. A pair of small blankets cover his body, and his head’s more beard than face. A burnt-out light bulb dangles above his head, like a forgotten idea.

  “He’s not feeling good,” Isabella says.

  I sit beside the man, grimacing with the pain this causes. He’s still breathing. He’s still warm.

  Isabella kneels beside him and whispers, “Albert. Albert. A new lady is here.”

  Albert keeps his eyes closed.

  “Who is he?” I ask, checking his pulse. I don’t know what I’m checking for.

  “He took care of the plants before Raul,” the girl says, pinching at the ends of her hair. “Dad brought him here a long time ago.”

  My eyes rest on Albert’s face again, and his lips appear like two shriveled slugs. Beads of sweat speckle his gray skin.

  An invisible flame sears my face and chest. I can feel sweat forming on my forehead. I can feel my lips drying out. How long will it be before I’m lying on the cement beside him?

  “I’ll be right back,” I say.

  With slow, unsteady steps, I circumnavigate the gloomy chamber. Here and there, I press my hands against the wall, searching for secret passages, or perhaps I’m simply testing the boundaries of this reality. If the stones bend or scream or change color, I’ll know that I’m dreaming or hallucinating.

  Isabella walks beside me and says, “Did you know beavers have see-through eyelids? It’s so they can see underwater. And they have lips behind their front teeth, not in front like us.”