Stephenie stopped running.
They were coming, yes, yes. But she had time, and her foot was crying out to her, pleading with her, begging her to rest. She stumbled, almost lost her balance.
“What am I doing?” She whispered between breaths. Followed by, “Carrie. Oh God Carrie, she’s at the farmhouse.”
She turned away from the zombies and limped on, looking at the farmhouse.
It was big and white, framed between several large trees. It had wood panel siding and open shutters on the windows. It looked like it belonged on that old forgotten TV show, The Waltons. The driveway was long and it looped around in a J, so from Stephenie’s point of view she was headed towards the front door. There were no cars in the driveway. No motorcycles, bicycles, or trailers either. There was a barn, a big red one, two and a half stories tall; it seemed to double as a garage. The driveway ran from the barn’s giant doors to the highway, which remained as empty a politician’s campaign promises.
Stephenie looked over her shoulder once again. When she felt confident the zombies were none too close, she stopped walking and turned around.
There were six of them, six walking dead. Two were heading in her direction, two fighting each other, one was crawling along the ground on his belly, and one was standing still, staring at the sky.
Looking at them now––with a little buffer of space to help ease her worries––Stephenie decided that yes, they were definitely mindless. Whether or not they were ‘brain-eaters’ was still undecided. Hopefully she’d never find out.
She crouched in the long grass, brown in some spots, green in others. She put a hand on her ankle and fell into a sitting position. The rag was completely red. Her ankle was wet; it felt like mush. Plus it was sore, swollen. She wondered if it would ever mend.
After a few seconds rolled by she stood up, feeling guilty on top of everything else. She needed to find Carrie and every moment she wasted Carrie would suffer. It wasn’t fair. She needed to continue her journey.
Limp by limp, she pressed on.
Then she heard it: the growl.
She spun around.
What was it? Where was it? She didn’t know––but then she did.
It was that thing, the thing she couldn’t see. It pressed down on her. Invisible, yes––but that didn’t make it harmless. She imagined it squashing her like a bug beneath an open hand. She imagined it creeping inside her belly somehow; causing her body to explode. She was afraid. Oh golly, Miss Molly, was she ever. The fear was real. Justified. She couldn’t see the demon causing it, not yet anyhow, but she knew it was there, getting closer, getting ready to strike.
She stumbled towards the house faster now, wearing the pain on her face––enduring it, not liking it. Hating it. As the front door grew near she noticed the stairs that needed climbing: two of them. They were going to hurt, unless she slowed herself down and took them one at a time. But she wasn’t going to do that; couldn’t do that. The big invisible monster was almost on top of her now, getting ready to crush the life from her body. She knew this like she knew her own name.
Still limping towards the house, she looked away from the stairs and eyed the door.
It had a long handle and a latch for your thumb. But what if the latch was locked? What would she do then? She didn’t have time to knock, or did she? Could she wait that long? Would she survive?
Soon, but not soon enough, she found herself in shorter grass. Then she was at the J shaped driveway. Rocks crunched beneath her feet. For a brief moment she wondered how (and perhaps why) they managed to get all of the stones in the driveway to be white. Then she followed a path that led to the front door, leaving drops of blood in her wake.
Slapping her wounded foot onto the first concrete step, she pushed herself up. Something inside her ankle squished in a way that made her knees tremble and another scream blasted from her throat.
The invisible monster was near.
She reached out. The door handle was in her hand and the latch was beneath her thumb. She squeezed it. Oh God she squeezed it, hoping for the best, praying for a miracle, praying the door wasn’t locked.
CHAPTER FIVE:
The Split Family
1
Blair Split, father of Christina, husband of Anne, owner of the farmhouse that looked like it belonged to the Waltons, sat in his favorite chair, reading a newspaper that bore a date of a time long since past. He had short dark hair and beady little eyes that sat low and wide on his slender face. His arms and legs were thin but strong. His chest muscles, which seemed neither large nor small, were well hidden behind his black dress shirt. The shirt itself was simple in design and looked like something a gunfighter would wear to a brawl that ended in killing.
Blair looked up, dropped the paper on his lap and eyed the front entrance.
“What’s that?” he said; his voice was rough and intended for nobody but himself. But he knew what was happening on the far side of the door; somehow he knew.
The door flew open and Stephenie plowed her way inside.
With a wild sweep of her arm Stephenie slammed the door shut. Eyes bulged from her head. Ignoring Blair, she hunted the door’s lock. And it was there. Thank God it was there. She clicked the latch with shaky fingers––fingers now red with someone else’s blood, not to mention her own. She tested the door, pulled on it, tried to get it to open. The lock was a strong one. It would hold. She hoped. She thumped her back against the wood, much like she had in the restaurant bathroom. Two seconds later she looked at Blair for the first time, panting and shaken.
Blair stood up slowly, irritably.
He was none too happy, that much was obvious, maybe even understandable. But his lack of happiness was quickly becoming the type of anger that seemed ready, willing and able, to bubble its way right into the realms avid fury. Stephenie could see this clearly; she could see it just by looking at him.
He tossed his paper aside and with a stern voice he said, “What the hell is going on?”
“There’s something out there!” Stephenie offered; she had her wounded foot elevated and both of her hands flush against the door.
Blair hesitated; his eyes became slits.
Then a woman stepped into the room: Anne, Blair’s wife.
Anne looked like she had been caught in a time machine, sent straight from the summer of 1968. Her brown hair had little wings on both sides, sort of looked like the brunette version of Florence Henderson, mother on the Brady Bunch. She wore a green frilly apron, and if that wasn’t enough, she wore it over banana-yellow dress that was shaped like the fat end of a bugle.
Following Anne into the room was a girl.
Stephenie recognized her at once.
It was Christina, the teenager that had been sitting on the patio swing, twiddling her thumbs. And now that Stephenie got a better look at her, she too was dressed in a questionable manner. Her cute little brown dress covered in white polka dots suddenly seemed very odd. When was the last time a mother and daughter team shared a nostalgic type of fashion sense that most people on the planet wasn’t ready to embrace? When was the most recent––
Blair cleared his throat, flashed his teeth and said, “What are you doing in my house?”
Stephenie, who was looking at Christina, turned towards Blair once again. Lines of fear seemed etched in her skin. She said, “Huh?”
“You heard me.”
Stephenie’s face contorted into an array of expressions: confusion, pain, turmoil, aggravation, stress––it was all there. She bundled her thoughts together the best that she was able and blurted out: “You don’t understand!”
“Maybe I don’t want to understand,” Blair proclaimed. “Maybe I just want you out of my house!”
“But there’s something out there! Something’s outside!” Stephenie slapped a hand against the door twice; then before the sound even dissipated she wished she hadn’t been so bold. What if that thing, drawn by the noise, blasted its way into the house and killed them all. Whose
fault would that be, huh? It would be her fault! Easy.
Christina stepped next to her father. Wagging a finger judgmentally, she said, “I know you. You were at the restaurant. What happened to you? You’re bleeding now. You look bad.”
Anne joined the conversation. “What’s your name, darlin’?”
Stephenie eyes shifted from Blair to Christina, then landed on Anne. She thought about her daughter Carrie.
Was Carrie inside the house somewhere, tied down and bleeding with her fingers chopped off? It seemed unlikely.
Blair said, “I’m going to ask you one last time you stupid bitch, what are you doing in my house?”
Anne swatted Blair with the back of her hand. She didn’t do it hard, but she let him know she was there. “Oh Blair,” she said.
Stephenie heard the name Blair and her eyes widened. So this was Blair…
Anne continued. “Don’t be like that now. Are you blind? Can’t you see the girl’s been cryin’? And look! She’s got blood all over her. What happened girly-girl? You get in an accident? Come on now, you can tell me.” She patted her hand on her chest. “My name is Anne. This is my daughter Christina. And don’t let my husband upset you none, either. Blair’s just a big ole bear with no sense in his head, that’s what he is. Come to the couch and rest yer feet darlin’. I’ll take care of ya. I’ll fix ya right up.”
“But what if… ” Stephenie trailed off.
“No,” Blair said, lifting a hand. “I may be a big ole bear, but I want to know who you are, and what makes you think you can enter this house––my house––without knocking. We have rules in these here parts, missy, and before you even said ‘hello’ you started breakin’ em in bunches.”
Stephenie’s chin began shaking, doing a little foxtrot right there on her face. She was about to cry; it was easy to see. She said, “I’m looking for my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” Blair seemed to consider things on a different level. He rubbed a hand against his knuckles and said, “Very well then. I’ll get the axe.”
2
Blair turned away from Stephenie, nodded his head and walked out of the room. Inside the kitchen, he opened a drawer and retrieved a flashlight. He clicked it on. The flashlight worked fine. On the far side of the room was a door. He placed his hand on the knob and opened it. A moment later he was outside, behind his home, walking towards the big red barn, following the beam of light the flashlight was creating.
Next to the barn’s two giant-size doors was a smaller door. Blair opened it, stepped into the barn, clicked on an overhead light and kept walking.
Shadows cut the room into sections.
He walked past three old cars, one of which sat on concrete blocks without any tires. It was a 1957, two-door, four-cylinder, Metropolitan convertible. In its prime it was beautiful––white along the bottom, yellow on the hood and fins. Now it was a rust-bucket with no place to go and no way to get there.
At the back of the barn there was a homemade tool bench. He approached it, eyeing the stuff that hung from the wall above it. There were lots of things to look at; he had plenty of tools. But it was the hatchets he was interested in, and he had two of them: a large one and a small one. He pulled the large one from a hook on the wall; it was quite a bit smaller than a full sized axe and it would be easy to handle; figured it was exactly what the girl needed.
He returned to the house––flashlight in his left hand, hatchet in his right. He stepped inside, clicked the flashlight off and plunked it in the open drawer. He was about to slam the drawer shut when he changed his mind. He snagged the flashlight and entered the living room once again.
Stephenie was sitting on the couch now, Carrie on one side, Anne on the other. She had a glass of water in her hand, which was trembling noticeably.
Blair approached, holding the flashlight between his arm and his ribcage. He pulled the water away from Stephenie and sat it on a nearby shelf.
He said, “Here.” Looking into Stephenie’s sad face, he handed her the hatchet. “You can have this too.” He dropped the flashlight on her lap.
“What’s this for?” Stephenie asked, looking up at him with teary eyes.
“You may need them.”
“Yes dear,” Anne said, supporting her husband. “You will need them. I’m quite sure of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Stepping back a foot, Blair said, “Don’t understand? What are you talking about? I’m giving these to you. What’s not to understand?”
“But what about my daughter?”
“She’s not here.”
Stephenie huffed. “But I talked to her on the phone. She said she was here. She said… ” Stephenie’s eyes squinted. She didn’t want to finish that sentence. She didn’t want to say her daughter had been crying and screaming, saying her fingers were getting cut off by a man named Blair. She didn’t even want to think it.
Anne said, “We don’t know where your daughter is, Stephenie.”
Blair followed that statement with: “It’s time for you to go.”
Christina, who had been rather quiet, said, “You don’t want to be here, Stephenie. Trust me.”
“How do you know my name?” Stephenie’s head shifted from Christina to Anne. “I didn’t tell you guys my name. How do you know what my name is?”
Anne said, “It’s time to go.”
Christina agreed. “Yes, it’s time to go.”
Anne and Christina stood up. Now Stephenie was sitting on the couch and all three of the family members were standing. They were looking down at her. From her angle, they seemed tall and intimidating.
Stephenie started to feel a little bit like Rosemary having a baby, like her friends and acquaintances were plotting against her. “But I didn’t tell you my name,” she said. “It’s impossible for you to know who I am! How do you know, huh? How do you know what my name is?!”
Blair crouched down and put his hand on Stephenie’s knee. His eyes were very cold, impassionate. In some ways he looked like a reptile. He said, “There are two ways we can do this Stephenie Paige of Martinsville, daughter of Richard and Cynthia Brownell, widow to Hal Paige, who died on the job on a day he didn’t want to go to work, who died because you forced him to go. Stephenie Paige, born on a cold September afternoon––September 22nd, 1979, to be exact. Stephenie Paige, a simple girl on too many medications, who didn’t finish high school all those years ago because she didn’t think she needed to, figured her good looks would land her a husband that would bring home the bacon. I know more than you think I do Stephenie, five-foot eight, one-hundred-and-twenty-two pounds. You can either take the hatchet and go, or I’ll take the hatchet… to you. I’ll chop your fucking arms off.”
Stephenie gasped. They didn’t simply know her first name; they knew her last name and everything else about her too. And worse than that, she had been threatened, right? Did that really just happen? Blair was going to chop her apart with the hatchet unless she, she––what? Went outside? Was that the game plan? She had to go outside and face the zombies and that big invisible thing that wanted to squash her like a bug? Oh God, did she have to go back outside? Really?
“You don’t want to be in the basement, girly-girl.” Anne said. “It’s not very nice down there.”
Christina nodded with agreement. “Bad things happen.”
“Very bad things.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Stephenie said.
Blair stood up. With a firm voice he said, “Carrie’s not here.”
“Yes she is,” Stephenie challenged. “I never told you my daughter’s name is Carrie! I never told you her name, or my name. That means she’s here! That means that, that… she must have told you those things! Right?”
But even as Stephenie barked out her dispute, she knew those pieces didn’t fit her puzzle very well. Carrie didn’t know half the things had Blair said. She didn’t know the year Stephenie was born, or the fact that Hal didn’t want to go to work on the day he died. As
ide from her, nobody knew that little nugget of information, nobody except Hal. And Hal was D-E-A-D.
Blair’s attitude was unflinching. “Get out of my house Stephenie,” he said. “Now, before I lose my temper.”
Reluctantly, Stephenie stood up. The flashlight was in one hand; the hatchet was in the other. She gripped the hatchet tight. “What if I don’t want to go?”
Blair’s nostrils flared and his eyes widened. Suddenly he was grabbing Stephenie by the arm and squeezing it. He yanked her away from the couch and dragged her towards the door like a pissed off mother with her spoiled brat child, not being polite or courteous in any way.
Stephenie shrieked in pain, not because of the way he grabbed her but because of her ankle. She was walking on it wrong and it hurt like hell. She said, “I don’t want to go outside! It’s dangerous outside!”
“You don’t want to be lost in the basement, do you Stephenie?” Anne said, looking psychotic now in her green frilly apron and her yellow bugle dress.
Christina agreed. “It’s bad in the basement. Terrible things happen.”
“Yes,” Anne said. “Terrible things indeed!”
Blair said, “It’s time to go!” He unlocked the door and swung it open.
Stephenie, favoring her wounded ankle, resisted valiantly. “Please! Don’t put me outside! I want my daughter! Tell me, where’s my daughter?”
“She’s not here, Stephenie!” Blair said with a smile that sat on his face dishonestly.
“But––”
“But nothing!” Blair pushed her through the door forcefully and out she went, easy as pie. The hatchet fell one way; it landed by the door. The flashlight slipped from her hand and fell the other way; it rolled into the garden.
Stephenie stumbled and grabbed onto a handrail before she found herself tumbling down the stairs. She landed funny, but did not fall. Then she looked into the house.
Into Hell Page 10
