by Billy Wells
“I’m really sorry that Mr. Pidcock is sick, and I understand entirely about canceling this evening. I’m looking forward to babysitting for you next Saturday. Would that still be at seven?”
“Yes, that would be fine.”
“You’ll pick me up right outside my house, like we planned this evening?”
“That will be perfect. Again, I’m truly sorry to cancel so late. I hope you can still make other plans for this evening.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Pidcock. My mom and dad are going to the movies in a little while, and I’ll probably join them,” Maria answered.
“See you next Saturday.”
Lisa was so excited. Everything was working so well.
At ten minutes to seven, Lisa drove by Maria’s house in her old Chevy and parked around the corner out of sight. There was a light on the front porch and a light inside, but it appeared that no one was stirring. She strolled up to the front of the house to wait for Mrs. Pidcock.
At exactly seven o’clock, a new Mercedes pulled up with a sophisticated looking lady, apparently dressed to go to a very elegant affair.
Lisa approached the car. “Hello, Mrs. Pidcock, I’m Maria. I’m so happy to finally meet you and to be your babysitter for this evening. Stephanie has told me so much about you and your husband and what an angel Matthew is.”
The wealthy bitch was overwhelmed by her charm and believed everything she had said without question. It was fortunate that Mrs. Pidcock couldn’t see the tattoos under her clothing and was so trusting toward someone she had never met.
Lisa lied about her courses at school and said she was looking forward to college and a career in publishing. She laughed to herself: The closest she’d ever get to publishing would be the latest issue of Road Warrior or posing for a low-class skin magazine.
The Mercedes wound up the long circular driveway leading to the entrance of the sprawling mansion. Lisa’s eyes glittered in the glow of the magnificent chandelier that hung in the foyer. The expanse of the interior was awesome to her as she looked to the left and right. A huge painting of a medieval castle hung high on a large wall, and the ceiling seemed to climb several stories above the entryway. She didn’t want to appear overly impressed, but it was hard to hide her excitement and wonder.
Almost at once, Mr. Pidcock joined his wife in the foyer, looking polished and impeccably dressed. He introduced himself and looked her over at first a little cautiously, then led her into another immense room with a mammoth television.
Mrs. Pidcock showed her the kitchen and, most particularly, the refrigerator. She told her to make herself comfortable and to help herself to anything she wanted in the way of refreshments. The pantry was filled with every kind of snack imaginable. And then in a flurry, Matthew scurried in carrying four large balloons, which he swirled about like he was about to fly a kite.
Mrs. Pidcock proudly said, “This is Matthew. He is eight years old and loves to play games. He goes to bed about nine-thirty or ten. He’s usually no bother. That’s what Stephanie always said.”
“Hello, Matthew. It’s very nice to meet you!” exclaimed Lisa with her most precious smile.
Matthew seemed very shy and looked up at her with brown eyes that seemed too big for his head. He stared into her eyes and in the sweetest little voice said, “Hello, Maria, I’m very pleased to meet you. Do you like games? I’m very good at games!”
“I love games,” Lisa offered as she thought of the various types of pain she might inflict on this little Lord Fauntleroy.
The parents showed her around a little more, gave her some more instructions on what to do in their absence, and with a minimum of ceremony, departed into the night for an evening of entertainment. As they drove off, she saw rain dart across the huge picture window facing the driveway and heard the low rumbling of a storm rolling in.
“What game do you want to play first?” a little voice timidly asked as she made sure the coast was clear.
“How about hide and seek?” Lisa suggested.
“Yes! Yes!” screamed Matthew.
“I’m going to count to one hundred pretty slowly to give you time to find a good hiding place, and then I’ll try to find you. Why don’t you go upstairs and hide? I’ve got a big surprise for you when I find you. The better you hide and the longer it takes me to find you, the bigger the surprise.”
“I love surprises!” chirped Matthew.
“Are you afraid to go upstairs by yourself?”
“No, I’m not afraid,” Matthew answered after pondering over the question for a moment. Then, for no reason she could imagine, he looked up at her inquisitively and asked, “Are you a very nice person?”
“I’ll let you be the judge of that when the night is over.”
“I can’t wait to get my hands on you,” Lisa mused as Matthew ran off excitedly. She started to count aloud slowly as she found several pillowcases in a hall closet and started accumulating anything that was small and expensive. She checked all the rooms on the first floor and had quite a collection of items in no time.
“Sixty...sixty-one...” Lisa shouted as she made a fast ham and cheese sandwich and downed a Coors Light. She saw a large butcher knife in the rack on the kitchen wall and extracted it. A fiendish grin swept over her face as she thought of the atrocities she might mete out later. She began to move toward the spiral staircase.
She heard a sound high up at the top of the house. The sound was muffled by the great expanse of the home filled with so many beautiful things.
Outside the thunder growled in the evening sky. Fingers of lightning made the crystal chandeliers dim in an eerie and grotesque ambiance. The storm was getting much worse, very fast. Suddenly, a violent thunderclap almost seemed like it had hit the house. Shivers ran up her spine as she climbed the staircase leading to the bedrooms. Each time the thunder crashed, the lights flickered. She wondered how she would ever find the little brat if the lights went out. She hadn’t planned on this inconvenience.
A rush of cold air fell from somewhere above as if someone had opened a huge meat locker. The air conditioning was off since it was chilly outside. The sound of rain on the roof grew louder with each ascending step. She shouted to the still darkness above, “One hundred. Here I come, ready or not!”
It seemed like it took forever to finally make it to the top of the stairs. She looked both ways. For a fleeting moment, she recalled Martin Balsam reaching the top of the stairs in Psycho as her eyes darted about uneasily. She looked down into the shimmering foyer filled with sparkling crystal and exquisite tapestries, and for that split second, she thought she knew what it must feel like to have it all. So many mixed emotions embraced her at that moment: fear, wonder, anticipation. She had never felt so alive.
She looked both ways once again and decided to go left toward the part of the house where she thought she had heard the muffled sound. Up ahead on both sides of the hallway was a string of meticulously spaced lit candles reminiscent of something she might have seen in a horror flick about witchcraft. The candles hadn’t been there when Mrs. Pidcock had shown her Matthew’s bedroom. Matthew must have lit them. How mysterious, she thought, for an eight-year-old to be playing with matches.
“Am I getting warmer or colder?” she shouted. There was no answer from the dark silence that lay in the distance behind the candlelight. Between the claps of thunder, the sound of pouring rain echoed through the big house.
A giant bang shook the whole structure as if lightning had hit something very hard. The lights went out. The ponderous “bong” of an ancient clock tolled somewhere below and pounded out eight as the sound of small steps running above pricked her ears.
“I hear you! And I’m coming to get you,” Lisa screamed. “Don’t be afraid of the dark. Stay where you are, and I’ll be right there.” The sound of giggling, muffled and distant, made her heart beat faster as she came to another flight of stairs that she thought must lead to the attic.
“I think I know where you are!” Lisa screa
med. “I have a big surprise for you, Matthew. Like I promised, a big, big surprise!” Lisa removed the giant butcher knife from her belt and ascended the steps toward a large door at the top of the stairs.
Finally, she put her ear to the door and listened. The noise was very muffled by the big door, but it sounded like an arcade was inside once she got very close. It was like she had come upon a battleground, a sports complex, a circus, a Star Trek adventure, and a carnival all at the same time. Her heart beat faster and faster as she gripped the knife and slowly and silently opened the heavy door.
Across the room was a wall of monitors, each with its own type of video game: Racecars were racing, baseball players running, monsters exploding, pinballs scattering, and spaceships warping. Stationed in front of this wall of screens was a huge command center with a large executive chair that faced away from the entry door.
She inched deeper into the room. “Matthew,” she whispered. “I’ve found you.”
One by one, all the screens on the large wall changed to still images of Lisa putting the silver in a pillowcase, ransacking this drawer and that, and holding the giant butcher knife with her eyes wide with excitement. The calliope of nonsense and noise ended abruptly, and an instant void of sound displaced the disjointed roar of the arcade. Lisa’s heartbeat accelerated as the giant chair facing the wall of monitors slowly turned toward her. Lisa’s eyes glazed in the illumination of the monitors as she stared into the bloodshot eyes of what only a minute before was little Mathew. But now these eyes were not innocent and childlike. They were devilish and cruel. The teeth were pointed, and the lips curled into a ravenous smile.
Two double doors opened on both sides of the room and a weird flapping sound emanated from the black rooms behind the doors. A hideous bat-like thing appeared from the right and like magic turned from a black, winged form into a tall pale man in a tuxedo and black cape. More flapping and more guests dressed in back gowns and capes materialized from chambers beyond. A dank smell rushed in, and a sudden chill swept into the room from the gaping black doorways.
Three beefy vampires in tuxedos grabbed Lisa’s arms and twisted the knife from her grasp. Turning her upside down, they carried her screaming to the center of the marble floor and impaled her on a stainless steel meat hook that hung from the ceiling. A massive crystal punch bowl was placed under her head as big band music from the forties began to play.
Mathew’s parents and the students who had discussed the babysitting job materialized from the blackness and met little Matthew at the punch bowl in anticipation of the toast to begin the festivities. She saw their ghastly black eyes in the flickering candlelight as the headwaiter slit her throat with a carving knife. The waiters proceeded to distribute a goblet of blood to each guest from the crystal reservoir.
Except for Lisa, a grand time of dining, dancing, and sparkling conversation was enjoyed by all.
* * *
Spiders
Charlie never went to the basement after he enlarged the laundry room to accommodate a washer and dryer on the first floor. He was seventy-three years old, and not the man he used to be. His arthritis and hip replacement didn’t like stairs. He also had his second heart attack six months earlier, and his doctor had warned him to take it easy. These were all good reasons not to go down to the basement, but the truth was he hated spiders.
The sun had just disappeared on the horizon when he turned the frying pan on with the frayed cord and blew a fuse. He heard a pop, and then the lights in the whole house went out. He didn’t mind changing a fuse; he’d done it many times, but he remembered his wife, Margaret, complaining about the number of spiders in the basement a month or two before she passed away. Things could have only gotten worse in the four years since then. He shuddered just thinking about it.
But, was he a man or a mouse? Feeling around in a cabinet in the laundry room, he found a flashlight. Luckily, it still worked. He opened the basement door and pointed the light at the darkness below. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed hold of the banister and eased down the steps, one at a time.
“Slow, but sure,” he thought, illuminating each step he came to.
When he finally reached the basement floor, he couldn’t believe how tired he’d become negotiating the fourteen steps. He panned his flashlight about the room to familiarize himself with the large space he hadn’t seen since his heart attack eight years ago. Until then, the basement had been neat and organized. Every screw and nail in its place. Now boxes were stacked everywhere except for the area in front of the stairs. Thick dust covered every surface.
From the corner of his eye, he saw something skitter across the floor, and then disappear behind the wall of boxes. It looked like a mouse or a small rat. There had never been rats in the basement before his heart attack. He couldn’t believe he’d let the space deteriorate to this extent.
Suddenly, he stepped on what felt like marbles or ball bearings in his path. His feet shot out from under him, and his head hit the bottom step with a sickening thud. The flashlight rolled away, and he found himself in a daze lying on his back. An excruciating pain traveled up his left arm, gripped his entire body, and then subsided. When he tried to move his arms and legs, he couldn’t feel them. His entire body was numb. His head lay at an odd angle against the riser with a partial view of the floor and the ceiling. Gasping for breath, he took in large gulps of air through his open mouth like a fish out of water until he finally began to breathe normally.
The flashlight on the floor illuminated part of the wall facing him, but the rest of the basement to the left and right was dark and foreboding.
In the kitchen, the phone began to ring. After four times, he heard a recording say he could save fifteen percent on his car insurance.
Spread-eagled on the floor, unable to move anything, but his eyes, he assumed a stroke had left him paralyzed. And if it had, he was sorry the fall hadn’t killed him. His life had already ended for all practical purposes. If he could put a gun to his head, he would gladly pull the trigger. He didn’t want to be a human vegetable on life support. What would be the point?
Pondering who would be the one to find him, he regretted not having a better hiding place for his sex toys and porno stash. After all, he had a reputation to uphold in the community.
Peering blankly upward, his eyes fell upon a giant web in the corner of the ceiling. In the center, a huge black spider sat motionless on its handiwork. His eyes followed the line of the ceiling to the left. There, as far as he could see, was another web with an even larger arachnid. The hideous specimen had a distended belly, which protruded grotesquely from the center of its body. He didn’t know if the thing was pregnant or just digesting something it had caught in its web. Watching the two creatures filled him with unease and loathing.
He remembered one of his friends had sent him a newsletter that included useless knowledge. One of the snippets indicated that during one’s lifetime, an average of eight spiders crawl into your mouth while you’re sleeping. Now he was in a room full of them with his mouth wide open, unable to close it. He might exceed the lifetime average in one evening.
Although helpless to protect himself, he watched the spiders movement above him on their webs like a cornered antelope watching a hungry lion preparing to spring. And just when he thought the fear of what the night still held in store couldn’t get any greater, the flashlight went out, and the basement fell into total darkness.
In the pitch-black silence, he continued his blind vigil for a while until he dozed off. When he awoke in the morning, he saw the sun breaking through the window in the concrete block wall in front of him. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he looked at the two webs in the ceiling and found them both unoccupied. Then he noticed the thin spindles of web glistening in the sunlight on both sides of his head. He couldn’t feel anything, but as he looked downward across the length of his torso, he saw his shirt moving across an enormous potbelly that bulged significantly higher than where his belt buckle used to be before
he came down to the basement.
Grimacing from what he knew must be happening, he lifted his eyes upward and saw a fat wooly thing with eight hideous legs freefalling down from a golden string of web. It paused when it saw his eyes move and then disappeared into his gaping mouth. He continued watching in horror as an army of black, baby spiders skittered across his swollen, bulbous cheeks and disappeared inside him. The corners of his lips expanded outward, and he found he could no longer breathe through his mouth. Then the creepy crawler with the distended belly erupted into view and perched itself on his nose. He saw it ogling him with God knows how many eyes as a sea of vomit mercilessly backed up in his esophagus and blocked his airway.
* * *
The autopsy concluded Charlie had drowned in his own vomit. Not only had he suffered a severe stroke, he’d severed his spinal cord when he fell on the concrete floor. The two combined events had prevented him from feeling any pain during his final hours. The medical examiner said he was lucky not to be alive when the rats came and had their way with him.
When Charley’s son and daughter found his sex toys and the porno magazines under the mattress, they wondered if their father had a darker side they didn’t know about.
* * *
The Ax
Orville and Pam Miller left Town and Country Realty excited and smiling from ear to ear. They had just signed the papers on the purchase of their new farm. They joined their two sons, Tim and Bobby, twelve and fourteen, who were waiting with the windows down in their old Dodge station wagon. It was a warm summer day in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
“I can’t believe we got such a large tract of land for such a low price!” Pam exclaimed.
