by Abe Moss
Somewhere down below, a fire was cooking.
✽✽✽
He couldn’t sleep a wink at all that night. Time passed and the darkness remained. He expected the sun to rise at any moment, it felt as though he’d been in bed for so long, but that never happened. He lay curled on his side with the knife cradled against him—a poor substitute for a teddy bear. While his body ached for rest, his mind was the furthest thing from it.
The funniest part of it all, in his mind, was that he never heard anyone come to lock the door again once Addie had left. As far as he could tell, it was still unlocked and waiting. The only thing stopping him from getting out of bed and walking out was…
Off and on he heard movement around the house. In the room next to his, the doctor’s, he heard footsteps pacing back and forth. Then they would quit. Then they would pace some more. He heard the front door shut a few times down below, and someone making a lot of noise moving things around beneath his room. Then it was quiet again a while longer.
And then he heard the screams.
It was Joanna, no doubt about it. His tired body trembled at the sound, shook with dread. She cried and cried—the cries of someone who can do nothing to prevent their pain—until her voice was someplace else, someplace he couldn’t hear her quite so well.
He gripped the knife so tightly in his listening that its point stabbed him in the collar bone. He relaxed his fist, though his trembling wouldn’t subside.
He waited.
Eventually he heard movement downstairs again. Muffled voices. He strained to hear them. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t distinguish any words. Not until…
“Joanna! Joanna!”
It was Addie. Her voice was hoarse but loud, shrieking in terror much the same as Joanna had done. Without further thought, Bud pulled himself to the edge of the bed. Then he paused. He bent his toes, flexed his legs. His muscles were weak and sore, but far from useless. It hadn’t been that long, after all, he thought. Even if it had seemed so. Carefully and quietly, he swung his legs out from the sheets, hovered them over the floor.
It’ll get me, he thought. It’s there, waiting for me.
In time with his worries, something scuffed the floor under the bed, soft and short, though he wondered if he’d only imagined it. He gripped the knife tight. He lowered his legs, his feet, until he felt the cool floor under them. There he sat for a good ten seconds, letting the terror fill him up like a helium balloon.
“Going somewhere?”
He sprang out of bed…
…and froze there, petrified in agony.
A sharp pain ran through him, like piano wire being pulled through his side, and further down below, his backside felt on fire. He held his breath to endure it, though he could hardly will himself to move.
Something reached out from under the bed, felt along the back of his ankle. He gasped. He took a stumbling step forward out of its reach, winced at the blooming pain, and took another step. On his third, the lantern against the wall came to life.
He spun on his heel and fell back with an oomph as he was pummeled to the ground. The creature let out a high, wounded shriek. Between them the blade gleamed in the lantern light, slick with blood. The creature pushed itself off, held a scaled hand to its belly. Slowly, Bud climbed to his knees, held the knife outward like a warning.
The creature spoke, low and strange. “You disgust me.”
The knife bounced in Bud’s hand. He got one foot under himself and attempted to stand, legs loose as porridge.
“What would your father think? Your mother?”
He got to his feet, swayed in place like a drunkard. He never lowered the knife. He took a discreet, shuffling step away toward the bedroom door. The creature’s orange eyes widened.
“You will never know love.”
The things it said were disjointed and out of context, Bud thought. It wanted to hurt him, he could tell, but he felt nothing.
“You don’t know me,” Bud said. The hair on his neck stood on end. He spoke to the creature, but it wasn’t the creature for whom his words were meant. He spoke to the bed with his blood on its sheets, and to the darkness through the curtained window where he knew no one waited. He spoke to the walls around him, listening as they’d always done. He spoke alike to everything and nothing, and his beating heart grew hot in his chest at the sound of his own voice. “I made you. I let you infect me, but I don’t have to anymore. I never did.”
The reptilian man-creature lunged forward and Bud slashed the knife, a golden arc through the lantern-lit darkness. The creature fell back once more. It held its chest, where a long red gash was drawn and bleeding. It grinned.
“Your efforts will never amount—”
Not giving it a second thought, Bud turned and picked the lantern up from the floor. He raised it up, heard the words die in the creature’s throat, saw the orange in its eyes simmering to a panic-stricken yellow, and he heaved it at the creature’s feet. The creature reached for it, hands outstretched like a mother desperate to catch her falling baby, and that was the last Bud ever saw of it before the glass shattered and the flame went with it.
Only the darkness was left.
✽✽✽
Addie thrashed like an out-of-water fish, and another hand clapped itself to her butt to keep her from sliding off. She kicked and bucked. She felt herself slipping over the hook of Nuala’s shoulder and writhed sloppier still.
“Stop it!” Nuala said. “Calm down!”
She fell. Hands grabbed at her on the way down, clutched clothing but nothing caught, and she landed hard on the wooden steps. Her head banged, hands uselessly behind her back. Nuala clambered over her like a spider, rolled her back up like a luggage bag.
“You did that to yourself.”
“Where is she?” Addie screamed. “Joanna! Joanna!”
The stairs brought them to a small room in the basement, small and hot as hellfire. Nuala dumped Addie on the cool concrete floor. She wriggled away, shouldered herself across the floor against the wall. She propped herself up there until she was sitting.
Still naked from before, Nuala crossed the small basement toward what appeared to be a large furnace, black and brown with ash and rust. She opened its door and peered inside. That pungent smell wafted over them in endless waves, a throbbing stench. Under Nuala’s feet was something wet and slippery on the concrete. Its red glowed hotter in the light of the furnace flames. Nuala fetched a large rod leaning against the side of the furnace and used it to prod whatever sat inside.
“You didn’t…” Addie’s voice escaped her. She could barely speak above a mutter. “You didn’t. Nuala, tell me you didn’t…”
I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming.
Nuala gave a distracted glance from the corner of her eye as she continued pushing around the furnace with the metal rod. Then she pulled the rod out and slammed the door.
“It’ll be a minute or so longer before there’s room.”
“Room for what? Nuala, what are you doing? Why am I down here? Where’s Joanna? Please tell me this isn’t happening.”
“Calm yourself, Addie.”
“Tell me this is a test. You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t…”
Nuala leaned the rod back against the furnace.
“Things are going to be okay. Everything will be better soon.”
“What is this? Where’s Joanna?”
Nuala knelt next to Addie, brushed the hair from her face behind her ears since she couldn’t do it herself.
“Things have been hard for you, I know. The doctor knows. But it’s all going to be better soon. I promise.”
“You’re not putting me in there.”
“It’s not how it seems.”
“You’re not going to add me to his wardrobe.”
“Your suffering can finally end.”
“This is exactly what you were trying to save us from.”
“This is different. This isn’t your doing. It’s prescribed.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Addie’s eyes wandered over Nuala’s shoulder to the buzzing furnace in the corner, alive and anxious and starving. It reminded her of the bathtub in that way. As she stared at it, something else on the floor next to it caught her eye. She hadn’t noticed before, had only noticed the rod. On the floor, in a heap of black and white, were a pair of gym shorts and a torn white t-shirt—both large. Addie felt the color run from her cheeks.
“What does the doctor want from me?”
“He wants to heal your pain. That is all he’s ever wanted.”
“Let me talk to him. Let me see him.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“It was a mistake. We made a mistake. Surely I’m allowed to make one stupid mistake. I’m not… I’m not hopeless!”
Nuala noticed the darting of her eyes and traced them to the pile of clothes next to the furnace. She stood back up and grabbed them off the floor.
“I’ll add these to tomorrow’s wash…” she muttered.
“Nuala, listen to me!”
“I hear you, Addie.”
“I’m not hopeless, I said. I can still get better. Give me another chance!”
“This isn’t a punishment. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Don’t kill me!”
Nuala paused on her way to the stairs.
“That’s not what’s happening. Not at all.”
Addie shook her head fiercely.
“No. No! You don’t get it! Don’t you know what’ll happen to me in there? What happens to all of us?”
“I’ve done it many times, yes.”
“The doctor… What does he tell you? What does he say?”
“I’m to end your suffering.”
“I’ll die! I… I won’t exist anymore. Don’t you get that?”
“I do.”
Her face was somber. She looked not at Addie when she answered, but at the door to the furnace, where the flames lapped inside like red daggers. Addie felt sick with the heat.
“How can you do this to us?”
“Just as the doctor recognizes the error in making an attempt on one’s own life, he recognizes the error in holding onto it. He says, ‘sometimes a soul is destined to live in an endless pattern of misery. It’s a bittersweet honor to put them out of it.’”
“You don’t believe that. I know you don’t. Part of you wishes it wasn’t like this. I’m not wrong about that, am I?”
“As I said before, saying goodbye is never easy.”
“That’s not it. That’s not all of it. You feel more than that.”
Nuala sighed, shoulders sagged.
“There’s nothing else to be done. I trust in the doctor, and this is what he says is best.”
“But what about me?” Addie fidgeted with her hands behind her back, pushed away from the wall so that she knelt closer to the middle of the floor before Nuala. “What about what I say? It’s my life, isn’t it?”
“Yes, which you already proved from the very beginning you can’t be trusted with. Because of your ailment, your sadness, you will never know what’s best for yourself.”
“It’s not true.”
“It’s why we’re lucky to have Dr. Lull, someone with the insight to know such things.”
“I want to live,” Addie pleaded. She almost wished she could cry in hopes of further driving home her desperation, but nothing came. Nuala probably wouldn’t find any sympathy for her anyway, at least not in any context that counted. “Give me one more chance to prove—”
“That’s enough.” Nuala moved toward her. “Dragging this out doesn’t help anyone.”
“Please!”
Addie shrank back, fell onto her side without her hands to steady her. Nuala bent and grabbed each of her biceps and hauled her upright, dragged her foot by foot across the floor. She continued screaming, begging. The floor whispered under her squirming body. As Nuala heaved, she breathed in short, sniffling hitches, and it occurred to Addie she was sobbing.
“Stop!” Addie pleaded. “Please!”
They came before the furnace. Addie rolled and bucked to no avail. With one hand, Nuala pinned her to the floor on her stomach, and with her other she pulled open the furnace door, letting the flames bathe them in their full red-hot glow.
“This isn’t what you want!”
Nuala wiped the tears from her eyes.
“This is all I know, Addie. One day it will pay off. It will.”
She took a handful of Addie’s shirt and ripped it to shreds from her back.
“He wants the ashes pure…”
She threw the white tatters aside next to Joanna’s pile. Then she reached for Addie’s shorts. Addie continued thrashing, the concrete cold and rough against her breasts. She rolled over onto her back, the cuffs around her wrists pinching beneath her, and fought as best she could as Nuala began slipping the gym shorts down from around her waist.
“No!” Addie screamed. She saw Nuala, tears still falling, sorrow and anger and annoyance brewing on her brow. “Don’t! Don’t! Please—”
Then everything stopped.
Nuala gasped. She hunched in a strange way, head thrown back, and her eyes met Addie’s, large as eggs. Her mouth gaped silently, a cough, and then she gasped again.
“What—”
Nuala leaned to the side. She fell against the wall beside them, against her shoulder, and slid forward along the brick until she was nearly laying flat next to Addie. She caught herself with her hands beneath her. There was a strange clicking sound in the back of her throat with each breath. Addie stared, horrified, until she saw something protruding from her back near the base of her neck.
Movement from the bottom of the stairs.
“Bud?”
He stepped forward and pulled the knife from Nuala’s spine. Nuala wheezed. She rolled over onto her back to face him, hands raised. Bud looked on the brink of falling over himself. His eyes were half shut, skin sallow. He winced and pressed his hand to his side.
Nuala picked herself up slowly and Bud came at her again with the knife. She caught him by the wrist, clasped her other hand to his throat, held him there. Thinking quickly, Addie got her hands beneath herself, slipped the cuffs under her legs, bringing her arms out in front. She grabbed the metal rod leaned up against the furnace and, swiveling on her heel, brought it down on the back of Nuala’s head. Her grip on Bud’s throat faltered and he plunged the knife into her a third time. It pierced her chest. A thick freshet of blood ran out, spattered down her belly.. She fell back onto the concrete. She placed both her hands over her heart. The blood oozed through her fingers.
“Fuck you,” Bud said. He looked down on Nuala. Her eyes were shut, though she didn’t look dead or serene. She was processing. Bud spat upon her and Addie tensed. “You’re a monster.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at them both, shook her head. Addie watched her dying, the blood escaping her through Bud’s inflicted wounds. She thought she might have felt vindicated or upset, angry or guilty, but she felt none of those things.
“Where’s Joanna?” Bud asked Addie. She answered him by pointing to the open furnace beyond Nuala’s body. In the corner of her eye she saw him begin to shake. He stepped forward over Nuala’s body.
“How could you do this?”
She closed her eyes again, out of pain or to avoid the judgement in Bud’s eyes or both.
“How could you do this!?” he repeated. His voice quavered.
Addie put her cuffed hands on his shoulder and pulled him back.
They stood a minute longer, watching her. Her eyes remained closed, though her chest rose and fell as she breathed. The pool of blood under her spread wider and wider.
“Help me out of these,” Addie said, lifting the cuffs. “I need her keys…”
Nuala said something but neither of them heard. When they saw her, her eyes were open again, darting between them both. She said whatever she’d said again but still her voice was too low, so they
both bent nearer.
“It’s glass,” she choked. “It’s made of glass.”
She closed her eyes one last time.
Bud shrugged, unsympathetic. Addie couldn’t peel her eyes away. Was she truly dead? Bud stepped away, toward the furnace, and came back with something in his hand. Addie startled as he toyed with the cuffs on her wrists and there was a tick and they fell away.
“Keys were sitting next to the furnace. We should go.”
“Go where…” Addie wondered aloud.
“Away from here.”
“There’s nothing out there for us. It’s true. Just like she said.”
“Well there’s nothing for us here, either.”
Addie thought. “We have to see him. He’s the only one who knows how, if there is a way.”
“He’ll kill us.”
“Maybe. We don’t know. But what else can we do?”
After a moment of consideration, they left the basement, left Nuala dead, the furnace burning. They headed straight for the doctor’s room upstairs. As they made their way down the hallway and passed the open guest bedroom, Addie slowed.
“Bud…” She looked him over from head to foot. “Are you… feeling okay? When I tried to save you before…”
“I’m not okay. But I can move.”
Addie nodded. There wasn’t much else to say. “If you need rest, tell me.”
“Let’s just get out of here. Before my body shuts down.”
In the doctor’s room, the doctor himself was nowhere to be found. Addie went to the desk, where the window above it was still broken out. The typewriter was returned. It was slightly more beat up than it had been before. On its keyboard she found a folded letter. She picked it up.
“There’s this.”
Bud watched as she unfolded the sheet of paper.
“It isn’t addressed to anyone…”
Together they read the type, silently to themselves. It read simply:
I’m waiting near the pond when you’re finished.
