Twisted.2014.12.16.2014 FOR REVIEW

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Alyssa turned him toward her, the office chair squeaking slightly as it spun around. She sat on his lap. Tried to keep her face impassive, but a grimace ricocheted through her features. Just a second – half – but Blake noticed.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't be carrying on when –"

  "It's okay," she said. She kissed him. The kiss was warm. Always warm with him. "It'll be okay." Then she felt something in the kiss. Over a decade of marriage and she finally felt like she knew when her husband was feeling something he wasn't showing. Not what he was feeling, but at least that he was feeling something. "What's really bothering you?" she said.

  He hesitated. Looked away. He looked like a kid who'd been caught reading under the covers when he was supposed to be asleep. "I yelled at Mal today. Really hollered at him."

  Alyssa stared at him. She knew what he was saying. What he was really saying. And she hated it. Hated that he still worried about it, that it was still an issue. Most of all she hated the man who had done this. Had made Blake feel this way.

  "You're not your father," she finally said.

  He still didn't look at her. "One-third of abused children grow up to be just as bad as their parents," he said. And, as always when he said it, he sounded half ashamed and half… what?

  Hopeful.

  The thought sickened her.

  "But two-thirds don’t," she answered. "And most of the ones who do are abused – tortured – over a long period of time. They aren't just born monsters, they learn to be that way. You've never abused Mal or me at all, and I'm sure you'll be just as great with Ruthie." She leaned against him, resting her chin on his head. "Every parent yells at their kids sometimes. Even the good ones. Like you."

  She kissed him again.

  And this time, though the kiss was real, though she felt the same love for him as always, she nearly pulled away in shock.

  Because the kiss was, for the first time ever, not warm. It was cool. Nearly cold.

  And she thought of the skull she had seen on Ruthie's onesie.

  She shivered as she had a moment before. Shivered, though for a very different reason.

  THE BLACK HOLE under the bed

  These are the things Mal loved about his room:

  It was big, without being so big that cleaning it was a huge gigantic ridiculous pain in the bottom.

  It had a lot of his favorite toys, but not all of them, which meant he always had something to look forward to on Christmas and his birthday.

  His bed was awesome because it had three different sets of sheets: Superman, Batman, and blue (which was his favorite color).

  There were posters on his walls, which were all Superman and Batman. None were just blue, because that would be silly, but the Superman one had a lot of blue in it.

  And, most of all: it was his. His best friend, Oscar Easterwood, had eight kids in his family, and he shared a room with two brothers, which was nuts. They all had to share the same closet, no one knew whose toys were really whose, and forget about keeping your toothbrush out of some other kid's mouth.

  But Mal had his own place, his own space. He thought that was cool. So did Oscar, who always wanted to spend the night at Mal's place when they did sleepovers.

  Usually Mal fell right to sleep, even if there was a super-bright moon shining through his window. He just dropped the shades and whammo! Sleepy-time darksville.

  Tonight, though, he lay in bed a long time. Mommy and Daddy kissed him good night, Mommy sang to him. She didn't usually do that because she knew he was Becoming a Big Boy, but he was glad she did tonight. Being with the Thayer family for over a week freaked him out, as did all the stuff they told him about Ruthie.

  He thought about what he could do. Maybe he could do like Phineas and Ferb and invent some kind of Cureinator that would fix her. He'd have to think about that. It might be worth it. Ruthie was really cute.

  He heard a cry. He hadn't known that babies' cries were made of diamonds and dirty ice, but that was what it seemed like. Ruthie's screams cut right through his ears and into his brain, and made him want to scream, too. Maybe that was to balance out the cuteness.

  He'd have to think about that, too.

  Something went thud-thud-thud-thud above him. The solid sounds of someone running through the second floor hall. Probably Daddy, since Mommy still wasn't moving super-fast.

  A second later he heard a door slam against a wall – definitely Daddy, he was always opening doors too hard – and then loud shhhh sounds.

  Mal gave up trying to sleep.

  He slid out of his bed (Batman sheets!), and sat on the floor beside it.

  The room was what Mommy called "a mess" and what Daddy called "a disaster." Mal called it "perfect," because he could reach a toy no matter where he was.

  Right here, for instance, just sitting next to his bed, there were three Transformers, two chapter books, his Beyblade stuff, and two Hot Wheels.

  He picked up one of the Hot Wheels – a van whose doors opened and shut for real! – and fiddled with it while he thought about the Cureinator idea. He'd definitely have to go to school to be an engineer and inventor. Maybe doctor school, too.

  A sudden scream from above!

  Mal jerked, his hands flapping out like he was trying to fly away. He blushed at the reaction – very Not Cool – but at the same time worried for Ruthie. What if this was one of The Attacks that Mommy and Daddy had warned him about? What if they were going to rush back to the hospital?

  What if Ruthie died?

  He didn't want to think about that.

  Ruthie stopped screaming. Her voice just ended like she'd run into a brick wall or fallen from the jungle gym at school and got knocked out or something.

  Another thing he didn't want to think about.

  Where'd my Hot Wheels go?

  Yeah, that was a better thing. He could think about that and not feel like crying.

  It must have flipped out of his hands when she screamed. He looked around the room, but even with all the stuff on the floor, he quickly saw it wasn't there.

  That left….

  He turned around.

  The space below the bed always seemed darker than it should be. Like there was a black hole under there that sucked up all the light that went in. Daddy told him about black holes last year and it was the only thing that made sense: a black hole was the only thing that could make the light just stop like that.

  Daddy said no way. Said that a black hole would eat the whole house.

  Mal had his doubts. He thought it likely a black hole was down there, and it wasn't waiting to eat the whole house. Just him.

  But his Hot Wheels was down there. And it was the van with the cool for real opening doors.

  He reached under the bed.

  His arm disappeared right away. Like it was cut off. Or like he'd never had one to begin with. Like his memories of using that arm and that hand weren't memories at all, but just dreams. Wishes.

  He waved his hand back and forth under the bed. Didn't feel anything. Tried to convince himself that meant the van wasn't there after all.

  But he knew he couldn't reach all the way back. His arms weren't that long. Maybe the van was farther than he could reach. So if he wanted to find it – and if he wanted to be brave, like Daddy – he had to look more. And go farther in.

  He wiggled under the bed. And now his head was in the darkness. His upper body was on the edge of the black hole.

  He looked ahead and saw nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Noth –

  There!

  It was like the darkness was a cloud that parted: suddenly Mal could see something. Could see the bright yellow of the van.

  It was on its side, resting on the floor. It looked like it had been cut in half… ?

  Mal frowned. He reached for the van. Couldn't… quite….

  He pushed forward. Almost completely under the bed now.

  Above him, the thud-thud-thud-thud happened again. The other direction this time, and slower. Daddy goin
g back to bed.

  Mal felt alone. Would Daddy hear him if he screamed?

  His fingers touched the van. And he understood why the toy looked like it was cut in half. It had fallen into a crack in the wood floor. One of the boards had split, or maybe two of them had moved apart. Either way, when Mal yanked the van out he saw a dark shadow where the van had been. A hole.

  He couldn't see how deep it was. Couldn't see if it was only as deep as half a Hot Wheel or if it went straight through the earth.

  Mal writhed backward. He expected something to grab him. To stop him.

  He had, after all, found the black hole. And Daddy had been very clear that black holes do not allow anything to escape from them. Anything at all. Not even a little boy just looking for his Hot Wheel.

  He crawled out from under the bed. From the strange darkness thrown by the black hole into the normal darkness of his room.

  Only no, it wasn't "normal" anymore, was it? The darkness under the bed seemed to have reached out a bit. Like a dark ooze, it surrounded the bed.

  Mal jumped onto the bed, leaping over that darkness. Drew up his legs, pulled the covers up until they rested right below his nose.

  He decided to stay up all night.

  Because Daddy had told him about black holes. But he had never said that they seemed to look at you.

  Or that, if you looked carefully, you could almost see things moving inside them.

  Above him, Ruthie started to cry again.

  MOTION UNMOVED

  Silence.

  It is late in the house, in this place the Douglas family calls home. Late, and all are abed, all are asleep.

  Nothing moves.

  Not in the kitchen, with its food from a dinner that went uneaten, prepared with care but overshadowed by exhaustion….

  Not in the living room, with its boxes of baby paraphernalia scattered about, its playpen and monitor and pink clothes….

  Not in Alyssa and Blake's room, hushed save the low hiss of a baby monitor that whispers all is well, all is well....

  And not in the baby's room itself, the room where little Ruthie sleeps soundly, bathed in red light, the many-armed mobile above her head casting spider shadows across her face and chest….

  Nothing moves.

  And then… something does.

  The mobile.

  Not much. Hardly at all. And it doesn't move in the circular fashion for which it was designed. The spider-arms, red and black and shiny, do not move round and round. Instead they move up and down, like the rim of a plate that has been balanced on a ball.

  Or like a hand unseen has tapped on the toys on one side.

  Up, down, up, down.

  Then the mobile slows. Stops.

  There is no movement. No sound.

  Only the hiss of a monitor in one room.

  All is well, all is well….

  Motionless silence.

  And then both are broken again. The silence shattered slightly, and unmovement transformed to action.

  There is a dark spot, deep within the house. The lowest point in the house, under the bed of a boy who, like all the others in this place, sleeps quiet and deep.

  The dark spot has been opened. Things once confined are now at liberty. Are now loosed.

  The dark spot was a crack, but now it widens. It becomes a fissure. A hole that leads to nowhere but a greater and heavier darkness than that which saturates the rest of the house.

  Small legs appear at the edge of the fissure. Two. Then four, then six. And then they are legion. Insectile legs, jagged and long and clawed.

  The sound that comes with them scratches and scrapes. It is sound that speaks of things writhing, things crawling, things creeping. It mimics the noise of the monitor, but it bears a different message. Not, All is well, all is well. No, something else. Something as dark as the fissure from which it comes.

  Something is coming, something is coming, something…

  … is here.

  SCREAMS

  Blake was sitting up before he was fully awake, his body reacting to the sounds before his mind had a chance to fully process them. Though in the next instant they pounded their way at least partway through the clouds that enveloped his sleep.

  Screams.

  He reached out to turn down the monitor, figuring he'd get Ruthie and bring her to Alyssa for feeding.

  Alyssa grunted in pain as she sat up as well, the same reactions taking over in her as those that compelled Blake to shoot up in a state of near-sleep.

  "I'll get her," she said.

  "You rest. If she needs feeding I'll bring her…."

  He stopped talking. Looked at the monitor. He realized that it hadn't even dawned on him that the sounds might be the sounds. The dreaded sounds that would send them back to the emergency room –

  (and how will I pay for that)

  – or worse. He had just automatically assumed these were normal feeding noises. The screams of a hungry baby.

  And in the next moment he realized that didn’t matter. Because it was neither hungry baby nor baby in pain. It was something else entirely.

  Alyssa blinked. Her eyes widened. She looked at him for the half-second he remained in bed, and then he was throwing the blanket and sheet aside and leaping to his feet.

  The monitor was hissing. Nothing more: just the white noise of empty air, the wave-sound of an unused radio band. And the LEDs on the monitor were not dancing the mad dance that always accompanied the baby's screams. They were silent, dark.

  The sound he had heard wasn't Ruthie. Screams, yes. But not Ruthie.

  Mal.

  Blake was on his feet as the thought pounded the last clinging mists of sleep-cloud away, then he jumped over the corner of their bed as he tried to get to the door in as straight a line as he could. Alyssa got in his way, moving far too slow. He almost punched her as the panic of the moment transformed her from wife and lover to mere obstacle, just a thing that had gotten between him and a child in trouble.

  He didn't hit her. Not quite.

  He ran around her instead. Passed by her so close that he felt her hair, stirred up by the air of his passing.

  Then he was in the hall.

  The screams were louder here. Louder still when he hit the stairs, taking them two at a time, then grabbing the newel post and slingshotting around so that when he let go he seemed to be running down the hall at twice the speed as before.

  The kitchen door loomed ahead of him.

  But before that: Mal's room. The screams.

  Blake grabbed the doorknob. A knob he had turned, a door he had opened more times than he could count. It had never given him any trouble. Never stuck. It was never locked… it didn't have a lock.

  Now the knob refused to turn. He pulled, pushed, yanked. Nothing.

  He backed up and kicked the door. Again. Again. Again, againagainagainagain.

  Mal's screams bled together, turning into one single shriek, a sound that rose and fell but never quite ended. Blake kicked –

  (againagainagainagain)

  – and his son shrieked and then the door shrieked, too, shrieked the tortured scream of wood falling to pieces under the repeated pounding of his bare feet.

  Screams, splinters, shrieks. All of it blending, blurring, bleeding together.

  Now Blake was screaming, too. Screaming his son's name, screaming for God and Jesus, screaming for Alyssa.

  The door screamed one last time, then finally gave way.

  What was left of the door flew inward and hit the wall of Mal's room. Blake heard the inside knob break through the drywall and anchor itself there.

  Mal: screaming. Shrieking. Never stopping for anything. Not even breath.

  How is he doing that? How can he –?

  Then Blake saw. And knew.

  And shrieked as well. Screamed and screamed and did not stop to take a breath.

  Mal finally seemed to notice his father's presence. His screams changed from a wordless siren-call to, "Save me, save me, sa
ve me, Daddy, save –"

  His boy's pleas stopped Blake's own hysteria. At least enough to answer, "I'm coming! Don't move!"

  But he didn't move, either. He didn't move to save his boy, he didn't move out of the hall, he didn't take a single step into the room.

  That would be… unthinkable.

  Because the room had disappeared.

  Or at least it had become a thing unseen. Still there, but cloaked in a living, writhing carpet that covered every surface. A tapestry whose warp and weft were legs and chitin, antennae and mandibles.

  Centipedes.

  Each one was six to eight inches long. Red heads, bright yellow legs that seemed to glow in the dark room. They covered Mal's walls, ceiling. The huge window that dominated one wall of his room was a writhing memory. The small desk in one corner of his room, his toy box were only discernible as large lumps under the slithering masses of insects.

  The floor was invisible. Just the things, creeping over each other, attacking each other, eating each other as they slithered madly from place to place.

  And Mal was still screaming. Still screaming from the one place that had not been coated by the monsters. Yet.

  His bed. Mal's Batman sheets hung a few centimeters off a slithering floor, throwing a static Batarang that would help no one in this situation.

  The legs of the bed did touch the floor. And the things were climbing them. Feeling their way upward.

  Blake looked for a way around. A way across as Mal continued shrieking.

  "Save me! Save me, Daddy!"

  Nothing. No way to cross, to reach his boy. Just the centipedes. The bugs. The things.

  "Save me!"

  One of them dropped from the ceiling onto Mal's bed. Batman now had a writhing monster curling along his cowl, one that the comic book writers had never envisioned.

  "Save me!"

  Another centipede fell. This one only inches from Mal.

  Blake moved.

  There was no way to miss the centipedes. No way to avoid them. So he stepped over them. Across them.