It rang again.
Stephenie crossed the room and lifted the receiver. “Hello?” There was no response so she tried her luck again. “Hello?”
“Mommy? Is that you? Mom? Mom?”
Jesus wept; it was Carrie.
10
Thoughts and emotions hit Stephenie hard and fast, like a snow shovel across the face. The first thought that came was: Thank God! It’s Carrie! Carrie’s all right! Everything is going to work out just fine! Then reality kicked in. How did Carrie know where to phone? And how did she know the phone number? What the hell was going on? Was this really her daughter on the phone, or was this some sort of weird twisted prank? Carrie had never even used the phone before, not in her whole entire life, so how could it be her now?
She said, “Carrie? Is that you?”
“Mommy!” The voice sounded like Carrie all right. Her frightened intonation was unmistakable. “Oh mommy, where are you? Please come get me mommy! Please!”
“I’m here babe, I’m here!”
“Where’s here?”
“I’m in the basement across the––”
Carrie screamed, cutting Stephenie’s statement in half.
Stephenie’s eyes popped open in shock and her entire body trembled. She needed answers and she needed them immediately. She needed to know why her daughter had screamed and where she was hiding. Was she safe? Was she in danger? What the hell was happening?
She said, “Carrie––”
But Carrie cut her off again, screaming louder than before, screaming like she was in pain. She also sounded terrified, like she was in a boatload of danger, like she was trapped inside a cage with a half-dozen rattlesnakes. With her voice cranked into a high-pitched squeal, she spat: “Oh no! Don’t let them get me, mommy! Don’t let them get me! You aren’t going to leave me here, are you mommy? Are you? You’re not going to leave me––”
The phone went dead.
Stephenie screamed, “NO!” She smacked the phone a couple times with an open hand before flicking the cradle on and off. It was no use. It was dead; the line was dead.
Then it wasn’t.
And a voice came on the line she didn’t recognize, sounded like a little boy. He sang, “Girly, girly, what you drinkin’? What the hell have you been thinkin’? Cut your throat. Drink your blood. Bury your corpse in graveyard mud!”
She heard a gunshot blast. Then the line went dead.
Stephenie looked across the room in a panic. She ran up the stairs. But before she reached the top stair the door slammed in her face. Then the light in the corner turned off. Now it was dark, totally dark. She couldn’t see a thing and she was trapped in the fucking basement.
She reached a hand out, searching for the door. She grabbed the knob and gave it a yank. The knob wouldn’t turn. It was locked. She shook the doorknob again and again and mumbled something incoherent. Then she slammed both hands against the wood. “Let me out!” She screamed, with a dribble of spit hanging from her lower lip. “Let me out of here! I need to get out of here!”
She stopped pounding on the wood, inhaled a deep breath, and grabbed the knob once again. She rattled it a few seconds and reached for the light switch. It was gone! GONE! How can a light switch be gone?! How can it vanish from the wall?
She slid her hand across the wall several more times, moaning and groaning like she was going to be sick. She kicked her knee against the door and smacked her hand on the wall several times.
Wait, she thought. Something’s different.
Beneath her fingers she found what she had been looking for: the light switch. Thank heaven; it was the light switch! She flicked it up and down. Nothing. The light switch didn’t work.
“Oh no,” she said, balling her hands into fists.
Then she heard something, didn’t know what. But it was downstairs. Whatever she heard, it was downstairs.
Slapping a hand across her mouth she forced herself to be quiet. She heard it again. A cold and emotionless voice was coming from the basement.
It said, “Mommy. Is that you mommy?” But the voice didn’t sound like Carrie. It sounded like a demon trapped in a child’s body. “Mommy?”
Stephenie spun around and pressed her back against the door. She still couldn’t see anything; it was too dark for that. But she could hear. Oh boy, oh boy, she could hear. And she didn’t like the sounds she was listening to. No, not at all.
Footsteps, slowly, one after another, moving towards the staircase. They seemed to take forever, but that forever notion was a grave miscalculation. They were nearing the stairs now, one gentle footfall at a time. She could hear the first stair creak, then the second. She imagined Carrie looking the way the others did, with her skull smashed open, her brains oozing from her head and her eyes locked in an icy cold stare. She felt her stomach contracting. She thought she might scream.
More creaking––
“Mommy?”
Finally Stephenie broke her silence. She said, “Carrie. Is that you?” But even as the words tumbled from her mouth she knew what the answer was. The answer: NO. Not on your life.
There was a giggle, but the giggle didn’t sound happy.
“Yes mommy,” a flat and soulless voice said. “It’s me. Why don’t you come down the stairs and give me a kiss?”
She heard the third stair creak, or was it the fourth?
Stephenie swallowed back the shriek crawling up her throat, swallowed it and closed her eyes. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t see a thing if she tried.
She decided to make conversation. Making conversation seemed like the smartest thing to do. And why? She had no idea.
She said, “No Carrie. I don’t want to go down there. Are you coming here? We should get going. Would you like to go home?”
“Oh yes,” the thing with the soulless voice said. And it was close now––much, much too close. It was almost on top of her. “I would like to go home with you very much. But you should come to me. I’ve been a good girl, you know. I’ve been very good indeed. I want to show you something, mommy. Come down the stairs. Come take a cold hard look at the thing I have for you. You’re going to like it.”
Another stair creaked.
Then another.
Suddenly there was a noise Stephenie didn’t recognize, a chattering sound that reminded her of two bricks being clicked together. The sound grew louder and louder before it stopped.
“Are you coming down?”
Trying hard to be quiet, Stephenie turned around and tried the doorknob again. The door was still locked. She turned again, placing her back against the wood. She was terrified. There was no better way to say it. This was the scariest moment of her whole entire life. She felt her hand quivering and her knees shaking. Her heart was pounding in her chest and eyes were starting to water. She was biting down on her bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed. Oh God, this was bad. This was so bad she thought she might faint. And the thing pretending to be Carrie had to be close now. It just had to be.
She heard a stair creak and it sounded like the one she was standing on.
It was too much. This was all much too much. She wanted to get into her car and drive now. Leaving her daughter behind was a bad thing, a terrible thing, but this was crazy. She couldn’t go on this way. And something that wasn’t human was creeping up the stairs, coming to get her. She knew it. How long before she felt the icy fingers of death wrap around her neck?
She thought, the icy fingers of death, what the fuck? Do I have to be so dramatic? Isn’t it bad enough I’m trapped in a strange basement with ‘God only knows’? Does it have to be the ‘icy fingers of death’?
But yes, that’s what it felt like: the icy fingers of death. And they were getting closer, and closer…
She pressed her back against the door as hard as she was able, and then, inside a moment of bravery she reached out.
There was nothing there.
She decided to make more conversation. Right or wrong, she didn’t know what else to d
o. She said, “No babe. I don’t want to go downstairs. It’s too dark. I don’t like it when it’s that dark.”
The light in the corner of the room clicked on. And to Stephenie’s surprise, the staircase was empty.
“Is that better mommy?” The voice asked from somewhere in the basement. “It is better, isn’t it? Come down here, mommy. I want to show you what we did.”
Stephenie didn’t know what to do, or what to think. What kind of mind-fuck was going on here? Something was on the stairs, right? Or was that just her imagination? She said, “If I come down there, can we go?”
“Oh yes, mommy. Just come down here and we’ll do whatever you want.”
Stephenie hesitated, pursed her lips together and walked down the first stair. She said, “Okay babe. Here I come.”
The voice in the basement giggled again. That strange clicking sounds returned, louder now than before. She heard whispers and the sounds of something scurrying across the floor.
She took another step, followed by another, and another. In a moment she would turn the corner and see all she could see. But she didn’t want to––oh shit, she didn’t want to see anything at all. And wait a minute. Did the fake-Carrie say we? How many creatures were down there? Two? Five? Twenty?
“Come to us,” the voice mimicking Carrie cackled.
And Stephenie did as she was told.
Oh God, she thought. I’m stepping into madness.
And then she did.
11
She turned the corner, imagining Carrie standing in the center of the room with snakes for hair, an upside-down cross in her hand, and Satan on his throne behind her.
Didn’t happen.
The room was empty… well, almost empty.
There was a huge splash of blood on the wall, and beneath the blood several body parts were scattered randomly: a leg, a hand, a piles of bones, a few scattered teeth and a rope of intestines. There was no way she missed seeing these things earlier. This was new. Impossible––perhaps, but that didn’t change anything. The blood was still dripping from the bones.
Suddenly the television clicked on; the screen showed nothing but static.
Stephenie looked at the blood on the wall, at the gore lying on the floor and the static blanketing the screen. She heard another giggle and quickly spun around, but the room was empty, still empty.
What is this place? She thought.
Then it came to her: I’m in a haunted house.
Maybe she was right. Or maybe it wasn’t the house that was haunted, but the entire area. Was it possible? Could it be? At this point, the area being haunted seemed like a reasonable solution, perhaps the only solution. Things didn’t make sense now, not in a traditional sort of way. Things had become ugly. So, assuming you swallowed the concept of a haunting, did any other explanation seem half as likely?
Stephenie walked up the stairs. She put her hand on the knob and with a turn of her wrist, the door opened.
Haunted, she thought. My God, the place is haunted.
As she stepped into the kitchen she heard a voice coming from the basement. “Mommy?”
Stephenie turned around; goosebumps crawled along her back. “You’re not my daughter,” she said, even though the voice was perfect. And it was perfect. Somehow Carrie’s voice was coming from the basement. “You’re a ghost or something. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Yes,” the thing that sounded like Carrie said. “I’m a ghost. I’m dead. You know that, right mommy? I died but I didn’t go on an elevator to heaven. I came here instead. I could tell you where my body is buried, if you’d like to see it.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Oh no I’m not. Please, don’t be mad at me. I didn’t mean to get kilt. Did you see the farmhouse, the one sitting down the street from the restaurant? My corpse is in there. There’s a bad man inside the farmhouse, mommy. He kilt the people in the restaurant and he kilt me too. He cut my neck whiff a steak knife. He did it as soon as I gots through the door. I didn’t even get a chance to go pee-pee, which I needed to do very badly.”
“I don’t believe you,” Stephenie said. But she wasn’t too sure what she believed. “My daughter’s not dead.”
“But it’s true,” the voice said, almost pouting. “I am dead. I am. There’s a secret passage going from the farmhouse to the restaurant. Did you know that mommy? It’s scary in there. I should know. Now that I’m kilt I can see it in my mind. The man who made me all bleedy snuck through the passage and kilt the people while they were eating. His name is Blair.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“That’s because you don’t want to believe me, mommy. But everything I’m saying is the truth. Go to the farmhouse. What’s left of my body is there. Maybe after you see it you’ll believe me better; then we can be friends again, ‘cause I love you mommy, and I’m scart. I don’t wanna be here all alone whiffout any friends to play whiff. I don’t like being dead and scart. It’s not fair.”
“You’re not scaring me. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but it’s not working. It’s not…”
There was a glass on the kitchen table, tinted yellow and filled with water. It slid along the wood, and when it reached the edge it tumbled off and smashed on the floor. Little chunks of glass mixed with water vomited across the tiles. At the same moment, a painting of an old man fell from the wall. It landed with a CLANK, and when Stephenie looked at the painting the man’s painted image was looking right at her.
Stephenie didn’t say a thing.
She backed across the room, keeping an eye on the open basement door, trying to erase the painting from her mind. But it was hard. She didn’t want to look at the painting or think about the painting for a number of reasons, including the fact that the old man in the painting looked like her grandfather. And she didn’t like her grandfather. The guy was crazy. At the age of eighty-five he killed his wife with a baseball bat and committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a motorcycle.
Stephenie’s eyes betrayed her. They shifted towards the painting.
The image didn’t look like her grandfather; it was him. Grandpa Ray, the old man’s name was. Grandpa Ray, on her father’s side. He had a flat nose, small lips and a scar that started at his chin and went all the way to his ear. His teeth were small and sharp. He had a nest of white hair bunched on top of his head like Albert Einstein. She knew the man in the painting very well. Oh yes she did.
He was a madman; he was her grandpa.
She turned slowly, walking away from the painting and the voice of her daughter.
The big chair in the living room startled her. Upon seeing it, she thought somebody was there. Thankfully she was wrong.
She walked past the empty chair. When she reached the door she had a terrible feeling it would be locked. It wasn’t. She opened the door without a lick of trouble and stepped outside freely. The air smelled clean, like a pleasant fragrance, like freedom, if such a smell existed.
She closed the door with a CLICK. Then her head snapped towards the front yard, and the fresh corpse that was lying on it.
12
The corpse on the grass had a name: Denise Renton. Her skull was caved in and her eyes stared aimlessly towards the house. With her arms and her legs spread apart, she almost looked like a snow-angel.
There was a growl.
Stephenie turned towards it.
Then she got a feeling (this terrible, terrible feeling) that something was coming towards her. Something big and awful, something she couldn’t see. She heard the growl again and this time it sounded closer, close enough to make her raise a hand in self-defense. She needed to get away from this thing, whatever it was. She needed to run because if the invisible thing got hold of her she wouldn’t know what to do. But it was coming. Holy green-eggs and ham sandwiches, it was moving towards the porch. Soon it would be coming up the stairs!
She took a step back.
It was too late to run into the yard. The thing, this hu
ge and terrible thing, whatever it was––it was right there, almost on top of her. She could practically taste it now, and if she didn’t do something quick it was going to be knocking her over and ripping her body into pieces.
Stephenie whirled around and grabbed the doorknob.
Now it would be locked. Of course it would be! Now that she needed it open, the door would be locked for sure.
She turned her wrist and pulled on the door as hard as she was able. But of course, the door wouldn’t open. She pulled and pulled and pulled. She cursed once, and she was getting ready to scream, but then she pushed on the door and the door opened just fine. She had to push it, not pull it. How could she be so stupid?
Stephenie plowed her way inside, bewildered and relieved. She slammed the door shut and rammed her back against the wood. Her eyes were wide and her heart was racing. Her knees were threatening to knock together.
The big chair in the center of the room was facing her now. And it wasn’t empty; it was full, more than full. There was a man sitting in the chair that weighed five hundred pounds or more. Must be Jacob.
He was dead.
But wasn’t.
The enormous man was shirtless and pale; his skin was decaying, his teeth were glistening and his beady little eyes sat deep within the dark sockets of his head. His shoulder blades stuck through his skin like ugly white fins. Bugs crawled across his belly thick enough to cause pile-ups. One hand sat on the arm of the chair, with fingernails long and black. The other hung off the side.
Stephenie looked at the hand hanging off the side.
Her mouth slinked open.
Jacob’s fat-knuckled finger’s gripped something that Stephenie didn’t want to see. Oh god––oh sweet, merciful god––it was a girl. He was holding a young girl by the hair in a way that could only mean trouble. She was lying on her stomach with her hair hanging in her face wearing nothing more than a pair of worn-out blue jeans. She couldn’t have been much older than twelve, thirteen at the most.
Into Hell Page 6
