Twisted.2014.12.16.2014 FOR REVIEW

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Mommy looked at him. "Shall we?"

  He nodded and hustled over to her. She swung the door open.

  Inside, every shelf seemed completely full – even the little ones on the door. Milk, lunch meats, bread, fruit. All of it laid out neatly (much more neatly than in their house), fresh-looking, yummy.

  "Hungry?" asked Mommy.

  Mal realized he hadn't eaten in what seemed like hours. Maybe days. Maybe years. Maybe if he took his clothes off there'd be just a skeleton underneath.

  He nodded and grabbed an apple. It was one of the green kind, which were his favorite because they were sour and they didn't get mushy like a lot of the reds.

  He lifted it to his mouth. About to take a bite….

  And dropped it as a jarring sound, like a hundred house keys clanging together in a trash bag, bashed its way into the kitchen.

  Mal looked at Mommy in near-terror, then realized the metal sound had turned into something weirdly like music.

  The music box.

  Mommy was frowning. "Blake?" she shouted.

  Daddy was unpacking upstairs. It must be him. He must have come down and turned on the music.

  So why doesn't he answer?

  Mal bent down to pick up the apple. He didn't think about it, it was just what you did when you dropped an apple. Especially a green one, because of the ten-second rule. It was still good.

  But Mommy grabbed his arm and pulled him with her and his fingers brushed the apple but he didn't grab it.

  She pulled him out of the room.

  Mal frowned.

  Had there been shoes below the coats when they came in?

  Maybe. He didn't remember seeing any, but he hadn't really been looking.

  Were they here?

  For a second he thought not. Thought they were new, and had just appeared out of nowhere. Then he realized that was weird and stupid.

  There musta been here. 'Cause they're sure here now!

  Besides, these sure looked they'd belong here. They were old, like a lot of the stuff in the house. Only to be honest, these seemed even older than most of the house's decorations. Like over a hundred years old. Dusty and brown. They were small, too. Like a kid – maybe someone his age – would have worn them once.

  Then Mal was past coats and shoes and into the hall.

  Following the music.

  COATS AND SHOES

  The boy and the woman rush from the room. The shoes do not rush. The shoes are motionless.

  But only for a moment.

  Then they shuffle to the side. A quick step-step, as though the owner unseen is trying to decide whether or not to follow mother and child.

  Mother and child do not see the movement, for they are already gone.

  They do not see the movement, just as they do not see the stockings that now appear, misting into reality above the brown shoes. Gray, tight in the shape of small legs. Tattered in places, with stains from long ago, and holes that reveal nothing beneath, because there is nothing beneath the stockings, nothing to hold them in that shape. Only cold, cold air.

  A small hand emerges from behind the coats.

  This hand is about the same size as that of the boy who just left with his mother, but this hand is ash gray. And the coats to either side of it grow cold, nearly brittle.

  The fingers stretch forward, as though the hand is climbing out of the coats. Like it is pulling itself free from their grasp, or perhaps even yanking itself out of the wall behind.

  Or maybe it is not pulling away from something. The fingers angle, crooked like talons, and now they appear to be reaching for something.

  Or someone.

  MINUTES AND MUSIC

  Alyssa ran into the hall, then slowed so fast Mal bumped into her from behind.

  What am I running for?

  At first gripped by a strange and sudden panic, an overpowering need to see the music box, to watch it and see its movement, now she was gripped by an equally sudden sense of danger. Mal seemed to feel it, too. He was pulling on her. Silent, but his body language was screaming, "Let's go. Let's go back!"

  Only Ruthie, deep in one of the twenty or so hours a day that new babies sleep, was not disturbed. She just breathed deep in Alyssa's right arm. As though lulled by the music that plinked out of the music box, somewhere out of sight down the hall.

  "Blake?" she called. And it wasn't "Blake, why did you turn on the music box and freak me out?" but rather "Blake, is that you?"

  Stupid. Who else would it be?

  But she called again. And this time made it explicit.

  "Blake? That you honey?"

  She realized suddenly that the clock was still ticking and tocking. And that the swing of the pendulum was in exact time with the music floating down the hall.

  What were the chances of that?

  Perhaps stranger still, Blake hadn't called back. Yet she was still heading down the hall. Her feet seemed like they belonged to someone else. Someone who possessed an overabundance of curiosity, but a dearth of common sense.

  Maybe he's playing a joke.

  Maybe he's so close to the music box he can't hear me.

  Maybe –

  (MAYBE YOU'RE GOING TO DIE)

  Her feet stuttered, and with that she realized she had even been stepping in time with the music, her movements trapped by the plinking notes and the tick-tock. Prisoner to a strange countdown.

  She stumbled the rest of the way into the entry of the old house.

  She couldn't stop herself. Gravity held her – both the actual force, and a gravity of a different sort. A sort that demanded she know. That demanded she see Blake, standing in the entry. That demanded she know –

  (where the voice in my head came from)

  – what was going on.

  Nothing. Nothing's going on. What could be going –?

  The music shut off as she nearly fell into the entry space. Like her presence triggered some off switch she wasn't able to see.

  There was only the clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Nothing else.

  No one else.

  Alyssa began a slow circle, turning to look at the living room, the dining room. Hoping to see Blake in one or the other, grinning a stupid grin, ready to stab a finger at her and say, "Haha!" or something equally creative.

  No one.

  She faced the kitchen again….

  CRASH!

  She and Mal both jumped at the sudden noise, the slamming of wood on wood. Ruthie woke up and started wailing.

  "Sorry! Sorry!" shouted Blake.

  Alyssa spun around again.

  Blake had opened the front door. Hanging onto a few last pieces of their luggage, including Ruthie's folded playpen.

  "Door was stuck," he said. "Had to almost kick it open."

  Mal went to help his father.

  Alyssa looked back at the clock. Tick-tock.

  At the music box.

  Suddenly she wanted Mal out of here. Out of this room, this house.

  "No," she said. She had to yell to be heard over Ruthie's scream. He turned to her and she slapped a quick smile over her confusion, her – what, fear? "I've got this, Mal. You go clean up your mess in the kitchen."

  Mal ran off.

  His footsteps kept time with the ticking of the clock.

  HOLY PLACES

  Mal ran back to the kitchen, and he was super-glad to do it, too.

  He didn't like being alone. He hadn't liked being alone since he woke up to an avalanche of creepy-crawlies all over his room. Not even to go to the bathroom – he almost asked Mommy to come in with him the first time he peed after that happened. Then he realized he might have to do more than pee, and there went that idea. He was not about to have anyone – even his mommy – watch him doing that.

  Still, even more than being alone, he disliked the idea of being out there with that clock and that music box thing.

  How did it start playing?

  For a terrible second Mal imagined one of the centipedes
hitching a ride in his luggage, sneaking in the house, and turning on the music box with one of its two mijillionty-billion legs.

  Nope. Daddy hadn't brought in the luggage yet.

  Then how had it turned on?

  And…

  … and where was the apple?

  He looked around the floor.

  I dropped it right here.

  At least, I thought I did.

  No, I did. For suresies.

  Didn't I?

  The floor was tile, black and white checkers like an old fashioned ice cream shop. A green apple should have been easy to spot.

  But he didn't see one. Not where he thought he dropped it, not near the fridge.

  He turned to look under the coats.

  Maybe it rolled off by the –

  There were no shoes.

  Hadn't there been shoes?

  No, there must not have been any. Because there were none now, and Mommy had been with him, and Daddy had been out front. So unless Ruthie was a ninja baby who stole shoes, he must have imagined the shoes being there.

  They were too old, anyway. They were pilgrim shoes, the kind with buckles and all made of leather. Too old even for this place. So he must have imagined them.

  Like I imagined the apple, maybe?

  No, Mommy saw it, too.

  So he maybe imagined the shoes. Or just saw wrong – he'd been in a hurry, after all. But that didn't explain the apple.

  He looked around again. Even got on his hands and knees, then on his tummy and looked around the floor from what he called his snake-view camera angle. He found stuff all the time that way. Mom laughed and said, "It's all about point of view!" whenever he did. Mal didn't understand that, but he laughed, too. Laughing with Mommy or Daddy was better than video games.

  Snake-view didn't help this time. It was just tiles and chair legs and table legs and nothing else until the black under the oven, and that was too low for an apple to get underneath.

  He stood up. Left the kitchen.

  He didn't want to be there, either.

  What if the bugs came in and took the apple?

  Turning on a music box would sure work up an appetite.

  He walked faster. Didn't look back.

  Mommy and Daddy must have figured out whatever was up with the music box, because Daddy was heading down the hall toward the kitchen. Mal almost crashed into him.

  "Hey, bud!" Daddy said. "Want to find your room?"

  Mal nodded. Going upstairs meant going away from the entry and the kitchen. That sounded awesomely good right now.

  They went upstairs. The stairs themselves were cool. Hard wood that felt solider than iron. No squeaks at all. Mal thought these stairs would probably be around when people had turned into dinosaurs and then turned extinct. He told Daddy that and Daddy laughed.

  Mommy had already picked out a room for Ruthie and was setting up the playpen.

  Mal picked a room beside Ruthie's. Daddy came in and put his bag on the bed.

  "You good here?"

  "What?"

  "You need my help?" asked Daddy. "I should see if Mommy needs me."

  "No, it's okay," said Mal. He still didn't want to be alone. But part of being grown up – part of being a man – was doing what needed doing, whether you wanted to or not.

  Daddy kissed the top of his head. Then he hugged him and left.

  The bedroom wasn't as cool as his was. Or as cool as his used to be. Before it was covered in centipedes.

  He wondered if those bugs pooped. Even if the men from PEST IN PEACE killed all them, would he come back to find bug poo everywhere?

  "Yuck," he said. Then he looked around to make sure no one heard him. Mommy and Daddy had enough to worry about without thinking he hated his new room.

  Even though he kind of did.

  It looked like a gramma room. Everything was flowers and tiny toys. Only the toys weren't the cool kind, with jet fighters and little guns. They were the kind Mommy called "nick-nacks." All glass and brittle and "Don't touch that, it'll break!"

  Even the bed looked like a flower store had barfed on it. The blankets had so many daises and roses and other flowers printed on them he could almost smell them blooming.

  But they looked thick and warm, so that was nice. And they looked good for hiding under in case monsters or killer bugs came, so that was nice too.

  There was a big cross on the wall right across from the bed. It was made of wood, but was so shiny it almost looked like plastic. Mal could tell it was expensive. Even more so than the nick-nacks.

  There weren't any crosses on the walls of his house. Mommy didn't like them, and staring at this one he could see why. He knew about Jesus, but he had never pictured him quite like the man on the cross. Body twisted in pain, mouth open like he was on the verge of screaming. Blood carved so perfect it seemed about to run right over the brown face.

  Mal wanted to look away, but he couldn't.

  He stared at the scream. At the man in pain.

  And he felt like something was dropping from under him. Like the world had gotten a little less real.

  A voice came into his head. He didn't know if it was from Jesus. He doubted it. Because he didn't think Jesus used words like the ones that came in his head.

  Don't run from me, little bastard.

  Little shit.

  LITTLE ONES

  The room that Alyssa chose for Ruthie was a craft or sewing room. Alyssa chose it because it was something that said "home." And home meant safety.

  She wondered if she would feel at home when they went back to the house where they lived. If it was even possible to feel safe after seeing Blake's feet, all red and bloody; seeing him smash those insects to nothing.

  Seeing the anger on his face.

  It wasn't just a sense of violation. Violation was something outside that forced its way in. This was something that had been there, with them, inside them, all this time.

  And she'd never seen the smallest trace of it. Never suspected.

  So she picked a room for Ruthie that was like the one she remembered from her childhood. A room where her mother spent so many hours sewing torn pants and dresses, making Halloween costumes and outfits for school plays.

  This room was much tidier than her mother's sewing room had been. Her mother's had been piles of cloth, loose spools of thread, two different sewing machines, several hampers with clean clothes that she was always in the process of folding – one of the never-ending chores that went along with family life.

  This room was just a small table with a single sewing machine that looked like it had been pulled out of the box yesterday. Another table with perfectly piled cloths, a carousel-style desk organizer with various sewing notions and supplies. A single rolling chair that obviously served double-duty for both tables.

  On the wall there was a frame. Too dark in the room to see what it held, exactly. That was another reason Alyssa chose this place to put up the playpen: it was dark.

  Mal had been a terrible sleeper from day one. At times it seemed he was less baby than tiny government assassin, sent to kill her and Blake through systematic sleep deprivation.

  Ruthie, so far, was the opposite: the biggest problem was getting her to wake up long enough to feed. At first that worried Alyssa, but a few talks with the on-call nurses at the hospital had reassured her.

  More or less.

  The one thing Ruthie needed to sleep, though, was a dark place. So when Alyssa saw the thick curtains in the sewing room, it was a no-brainer.

  Alyssa lay the baby in the playpen. She draped a light blanket over her. Touched her head. Ruthie, like Mal had before her, enjoyed the hairline of a very old man. Wispy strands that clung in patches around her ears, to the back of her skull. Alyssa didn't understand how that could result in such an awesome level of cuteness, but it did. Sometimes she didn't just want to kiss her daughter. She wanted to bite her, to hug her so tightly she worried the baby's tiny bones would crack.

  Violence and love. Sh
e wondered if they were tied together for everyone. The way sometimes after she and Blake made love she would find scratches on her back. The way high school kids found hickeys – glorified bruises – on necks (and other places) after serious makeout sessions.

  She turned to the frame on the wall. Curious. Also worried. What if it was some creepy thing? She wasn't worried about it being a picture of a pedophile or something beheading endangered pandas. But….

  But you never knew.

  It was an embroidered picture. Cross-stitching so intricate she could barely make out where one threaded "x" ended and the next took up. It was the image of a vaguely Santa-ish man praying, so detailed she could almost see the veins on his old hands, could almost hear his murmured prayers.

  It was far from creepy. It was beautiful. A Saint, perhaps. Perhaps simply an image of righteousness.

  Either way, it was an appropriate watchman for her Innocent.

  She put the baby monitor on the table with the sewing machine. Plugged it in, fumbling as she always did for the outlet. She could deal with social media, with the newest updates to her computer operating systems.

  The ability to successfully navigate the small prong and large prong on a plug into the appropriate outlet receptacles continued to elude her.

  She finally managed to do it, and only winced ten dozen or so times as pain ran through the center of her body. Another ten dozen times as she straightened up.

  She barely felt like throwing up at all. So she was definitely healing.

  She left Ruthie's room. Walked a few paces and saw Mal in a room that looked like something decorated by a deranged grandmother with a flower fetish.

  He was staring at an intricate cross on the wall. It gave her the heebies, and maybe half a case of the jeebies to boot.

  "You okay?" she said.

  Mal didn't respond for half a second. Not a long lag, but long enough that a different kind of feeling rippled through Alyssa's center. A feeling that something was off. Wrong.

  Then Mal nodded. He didn't look away from the cross.