The Killing Room

by John Manning

  Chapter Six

  Philip Young sat by his swimming pool sipping a Beefeater martini with his requisite three olives. It was a warm day. Indian summer. He watched as Carlos, his Salvadoran gardener, trimmed the topiary that surrounded the pool. The sun was hot on Philip’s cheeks, so he adjusted the wide-brimmed hat he wore. He’d just had laser resurfacing on his face to blast away the wrinkles and the age spots. He didn’t want a sunburn to ruin all that work.

  He had a good life, and his life pleased him. Philip watched now as his daughter Chelsea welcomed a couple of girlfriends to sit on the other side of the pool. Such young nubile beauties. One of the girls was dark, the other blond. Philip forgot their names. But he certainly didn’t forget how good they looked in their bikinis, which was why he’d encouraged Chelsea to invite them over today. He took another sip of his martini and lowered his sunglasses over his eyes so they wouldn’t catch him watching.

  “Daddy!” Chelsea was calling from the other side of the pool. “Would it be all right if we took the Bentley into town later?”

  “What’s wrong with your Beemer?” Philip asked.

  “We’re going shopping,” Chelsea said, “and there’s not going to be room for Trisha and Joni and me and all our packages.” She giggled.

  Trisha and Joni. Those were their names. The two girls waved at Philip as they stretched out on chaises, exposing their long smooth legs.

  “Oh, all right, Chels,” Philip said. “I don’t plan on going anywhere today. I’m staying right here and soaking up this last little bit of summer. Won’t be long until fall is here…”

  Even as he said the words, Philip knew what the fall season entailed. His mood darkened. The family reunion. He leaned back and closed his eyes. The goddamn family reunion. Every ten fucking years.

  He’d lost his father to that room fifty years ago, when Philip was still just a teenager. Then, ten years later, his sister Jeanette had faced something even worse than death in that terrible place. From that moment on, Philip had vowed that he would never again let that room take anything else from him.

  He looked over at Chelsea. She was throwing her head back in laughter with her friends, her strawberry blond hair reflecting the sun. How beautiful she was, how full of life. She was just twenty-three. Young enough to have her whole life ahead of her, but finally old enough to be told about the room. Philip didn’t relish that duty. But this year, for the first time, both Chelsea and her twin brother Ryan would be required to take part in the lottery. Philip shuddered.

  Required they might be-but he would not let anything happen to his children.

  “Refill your glass, Mr. Young?”

  His eyes flicked up behind his sunglasses to the face of his pretty young assistant. He’d hired Melissa to help him now that he was working mostly from home. The brokerage that bore his name could function quite well without him needing to trek into the city every morning from his home in Cos Cob the way he had most of his career. He was past sixty-five now; he was entitled to leisure.

  That didn’t mean he didn’t work or that he wasn’t on top of the market. He could just do it poolside from now on, with a lovely young assistant to help him. “Yes, thank you,” he said to Melissa, handing her his empty martini glass.

  When he’d hired her, Philip had explained to Melissa that the job would be more than just making telephone calls and filing papers. “I need an all-around personal assistant,” he had explained. That meant refreshing his drinks when she noticed he was low. And it meant other things, too-but only when Chelsea or other members of the family were not around.

  Philip watched Melissa walk across the lawn to the outside bar. She certainly filled out her tight white jeans well. Chelsea had rolled her eyes when she saw Philip’s new assistant-“Trailer trash from Bridgeport, Daddy,” she had called her, and Philip supposed she was right-but his son Ryan had given him the thumbs-up. The reaction of his wife Vanessa, however, was considerably more muted.

  “Tell me, Philip,” she had said, “does the girl know anything about the stock market? Or finances in general?”

  “All she needs to know is how to make telephone calls and hit print on the computer,” Philip had replied.

  And she knows how to do those things well, Philip thought. Other things she does even better. A small grin crept across his face.

  “Darling,” he called over to Chelsea. “When are you and the girls going shopping?”

  “Maybe in an hour or so,” Chelsea called back.

  Melissa was handing him his drink. “Ah, thank you, my dear,” Philip said. “And how long are you planning to stay today?”

  “However long you need me, Mr. Young,” Melissa told him, her big brown eyes flashing at him from under her long lashes.

  He smiled up at her. “After Chelsea leaves, there’s some work I’d like to get done in my office,” he said.

  “Of course,” Melissa said, giving him a broad smile.

  Philip settled back into his chair, taking a sip of the martini. Yes, his life pleased him. There was no way he would let anything interfere with his life.

  Not even a family curse could stand up against Philip Young.

  He was one of the most powerful men on Wall Street. He had spent decades building up his firm. With the money his father left him he had invested wisely and shrewdly and sometimes unscrupulously. He was a very rich man.

  But not nearly as rich as he would be one day when Uncle Howard finally died.

  Philip planned on bulldozing that house and its accursed room the moment the old man finally kicked off. In the meantime, he kept encouraging Chelsea and Ryan to go up to Maine and visit with their uncle. Butter him up. Get on his good side. Philip worried that the old codger was going to leave the bulk of his billions to that good-for-nothing Douglas. The kid was always winking at Uncle Howard, joshing with him, making him laugh. “Get in there and work your charm on the old coot,” Philip had urged his kids. “Don’t let that worthless gypsy walk off with everything.”

  It occurred to Philip as he sat there sipping his gin that this would be the first year Douglas would partake in the lottery as well. He stared across the pool at Chelsea and her friends. Every previous Douglas Young-from the kid’s great-grandfather down to his father-had been selected by the lottery to spend the night in that room. And every previous Douglas Young had died in there.

  Why shouldn’t it be the same for Douglas Desmond Young IV?

  A flicker of something passed through Philip’s heart. Conscience? No, it couldn’t be conscience. He’d long ago surrendered that. One had to if one was going to conquer Wall Street. Maybe it was grief. Philip wasn’t so hardened that he didn’t regret the deaths of his kinfolk. He’d loved his older brother Martin, of course. They’d been playmates and confidants as children. And growing up, his cousin Douglas Young III had been his hero, the upstanding, courageous public defender who thought of others before thinking of himself.

  But Philip came to realize that he’d rather be alive than upstanding. That being deceitful was better than being dead.

  Alone among his generation, he had survived. Every one of his siblings-including Jeanette-had fallen victim to that room. Every one of his first cousins, too, had all been cut down in their youth. One by one, they had been selected to enter the room or they had run off, like his foolish brother Ernie, only to be slaughtered for their mutiny. Philip was the only male Young in nearly a hundred years-except for Uncle Howard, of course-who had made it past the age of sixty.

  And he fully intended to ensure that such remained the case. And that Ryan and Chelsea, too, lived to ripe old ages.

  Ripe, wealthy old ages.

  “Mr. Young?”

  He lifted an eye. Melissa was standing beside him.

  “Mrs. Young is on the telephone. She’s decided to stay in the city to have dinner with Gloria Vanderbilt. She wants to know if you have any objection.”

  Philip crooked a little smile at Melissa. “No objection from me,” he said. Melissa
returned his smile. She placed the phone to her ear and spoke into it. “Mrs. Young? He says to stay and have a wonderful evening.”

  Philip laughed. Oh, yes, he enjoyed his life.

  So what if he’d had to resort to extraordinary means to do so? He remembered the terror he’d felt as a young man, watching Aunt Margaret prepare all their names and place them in that box. His life-reduced to a slip of paper! He was just eighteen at the time of his first lottery. His whole future might have ended that night. He had felt the sweat bead on his forehead as Uncle Howard took the box from Aunt Margaret. Just hours earlier the old man had told him the secret of that room. At first Philip had scoffed, but he had seen the look in his father’s eyes. His father believed it, so it must be true. Sheer panic had gripped Philip then. He wanted to bolt. But his brother Martin, four years older, was brave, even stoic. Philip had never possessed the steel of his brother. Martin could dive from the cliffs into the water below, but Philip had never had the guts. But he couldn’t indulge in such terror now. It would forever mark him as a coward. So he trooped into the parlor following Martin and his father, fully expecting it would be his name that would be drawn, his life that would end that night.

  When his father’s name had been drawn, Philip’s first reaction was relief. He didn’t like admitting that to himself, but it was true. He loved his father, but better his father than him. When his father was found dead the next morning, Philip wailed like a banshee over his body. But a little voice inside him was also saying, “Thank God it isn’t me.”

  Ten years later it was his sister Jeanette’s turn. His baby sister. He saw the fear in her eyes. Martin, of course, volunteered to go in her place. Philip was silent. Only after Uncle Howard had insisted that the lottery forbade anyone from taking the place of the one chosen did Philip speak up, offering great protests that his sister should have to face such a fate, that if only it were possible he would be glad to go in her place.

  He took another sip of his drink. There were parts of his past he did not like remembering. But how could he avoid them, with another family reunion looming? With the possibility that Chelsea and Ryan might have to face that room?

  Aunt Margaret died two years before the lottery of 1980. She passed away peacefully in her sleep, something for which the entire family envied her. Aunt Margaret had been part of the lottery since the beginning, and each time she had escaped being chosen.

  Was it significant that she had prepared the names each time, and burned them afterward in the fireplace?

  Philip began to wonder if Aunt Margaret had contrived to keep herself out of that room. Of course, there were always the same number of slips of paper as there were candidates for the lottery. Aunt Margaret wrote all their names out, then folded the papers in half. But what if, Philip had wondered, she had written someone’s name twice and left out her own? Whether she had or not, no one would ever know.

  In 1980, Philip volunteered to take over for Aunt Margaret in writing down the names.

  That year there were six of them in the lottery. Philip and Martin. Their cousin Douglas and his two children, Douglas and Therese. And of course, Uncle Howard himself. Philip wrote everyone’s name but his own. Then he wrote Douglas Senior’s name again. When he handed the box to Uncle Howard, he was giddy-ecstatic-that his plan had worked. Douglas was chosen to enter the room.

  Was there guilt? Maybe a flash, when he saw Therese call out, “Daddy! I love you!” But then it was gone. The instinct for survival was a far more potent emotion than guilt. By then, Philip was a hotshot on Wall Street. He was set to marry Vanessa McMaster, heiress to the textile fortune and one of the most chased-after socialites in New York. He had feared they’d never be able to have a family, but now he had found the answer. So long as he kept preparing the names, he could keep himself-and any children he would have-out of that room.

  He smiled to himself. And Uncle Howard can only leave his billions to those who are left alive.

  The next lottery, there was some regret. Tradition meant something in the Young family, particularly in matters of the lottery, so no one questioned Philip once again preparing the names. He toyed briefly with the idea of leaving out Martin’s name this time. But then he’d have to leave out Martin’s two children, Paula and Dean, brought into the lottery for the first time that year. And that would cut down the number of available names to the extreme: every name would have to be either that of Uncle Howard or their cousin Douglas, the sole surviving member of that branch of the family. So Philip did what he’d done ten years previously. He left only himself out, and wrote Douglas twice. Hell, the world didn’t need another bleeding-heart public defender.

  But this time, Martin was chosen. His brother. The fellow who had taught him to ride a bike and to play football. The one who, after their father died, had stepped in and been adviser and supporter as Philip made his way in the world. It had been Martin who’d given him money in the very beginning to make his first investments in the stock market. And now Martin was going to die.

  Who’s to say his name wouldn’t have been chosen even if Philip’s name had been in there? That’s how Philip rationalized it. How he still rationalized it.

  Ten years later, it was easier. This time the lottery got the public defender. They found him in the morning with a plastic bag over his head. This time, Philip had felt no grief at all, not even a flash, not even when Douglas’s teenaged son, also named Douglas, had broken down in tears at the news. By now it was clear that he had found the escape hatch from the family curse. His children need never worry. That was all that mattered.

  He watched now as Chelsea and her friends stood from their chaises, chattering among themselves, talking on their cell phones, getting ready for their shopping spree. He knew his son Ryan was at the brokerage, working even on a weekend, making millions for himself. If a member of the Young family had to die every decade as a result of some old curse, then it was far, far better that it be someone from a branch that didn’t matter as much, that couldn’t claim the power and success that Philip’s family did.

  After Chelsea had blown him a kiss and sped off in his Bentley, Philip stood. He benevolently gave Carlos the rest of the afternoon off. Then he hurried inside the house to find Melissa.

  She was in the office, waiting for him in the lacy black teddy he had bought her.

  He took her in his arms roughly and began kissing her neck. Melissa ran her hands, with their bright red fingernails, all over his fleshy chest and stomach, playing with the tufts of white hair that grew between his sagging pectorals. Melissa excited him more than any woman had in a long, long time. Yes, indeed, she was trailer trash from Bridgeport. But that only made her more appealing. Philip knew it was his money, his status, that aroused her, and he liked the charge that it gave him. The power. He pulled her tightly into him and bit her neck. She moaned.

  Then, another sound.

  “What was that?” Melissa asked.

  “Nothing,” Philip said, but he had heard it too.

  A baby’s cry.

  It came again.

  “Is there a child in the house?” Melissa asked.

  “No,” Philip said. “There is no child.”

  From such hot passion just a moment before, now Philip’s blood ran cold.

  A baby cried again. It sounded as if it came from the living room.

  “There is a child here!” Melissa insisted. “I have to go check!”

  “No!” Philip insisted. “Don’t go out there!”

  She gave him a confused look. “But if someone is here…we can’t get caught!”

  Again the child cried from the other room. It was an insistent cry. Terrified. It grew from a few anxious yelps to one long wail now. Melissa ignored Philip’s objections and pulled on her jeans and threw a sweatshirt on over the teddy. She headed out toward the living room.

  “Don’t touch it!” Philip shouted, following her.

  Indeed there was a baby sitting in the middle of the living room. It wore jus
t a cloth diaper. It couldn’t have been much more than about six months old. It was crying ferociously, its pudgy little hands in the air.

  “The poor child!” Melissa cried.

  “Don’t touch it!” Philip repeated.

  She looked at him as if he were mad. “The child is terrified, maybe in pain…”

  “No!”

  Suddenly the crying stopped. They both turned to look at the baby. It began to crawl away from them, across the carpet and behind the divan. Melissa hurried to follow it. But as she crossed the room, she discovered the baby was gone.

  But in its place were a series of bloody handprints, staining the white carpet in a horrible trail. The handprints ended abruptly in the middle of the room, as if the baby had just disappeared into thin air.

  Chapter Seven

  Uncle Howie had sure gone all out for this meal. At some point even before Douglas had gotten up, a whole army seemed to have descended on the house. Whereas yesterday there wasn’t a servant in sight, today the place was buzzing with them. Housekeepers were doing his laundry and making his bed. An assistant was heading into town with a van to haul Douglas’s repaired bike up to the house. And in the kitchen, a dozen cooks and waitstaff were preparing the most elaborate breakfast Douglas had ever seen-let alone tasted.

  “The bread is all fresh baked,” Uncle Howie was saying from the head of the table. “There are fresh croissants and scones and brioche. The fruit is all local. Strawberries, blueberries, apples, peaches. The eggs will be out in a moment. You’ll find an assortment of cheeses and fresh herbs on the table to add to your meals as you choose. Basil, oregano, cilantro, rosemary-all grown here on the estate. And you have your choice of Canadian bacon or smoked lox-or you can have both, of course.”

  Douglas was famished. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He glanced over at Carolyn Cartwright. She smiled, seemingly overwhelmed by all the food.