Darling (27 page)

The cry rang out again and his mind finally focused on it. It was his cell phone ringing its high electronic whine.

He stumbled over to the dresser, equilibrium gone, his body threatening to crash into the walls as it pitched one way and then the other. He snatched his phone up and answered it without looking at the screen.

“Mike?”

“…Mom?” He fell down onto his bed.

A pause. “How are you?” She sounded tense, rigid. He could imagine her standing by the phone in the kitchen, refusing to walk any farther than a few feet away even though there was no cord, her free hand pulled tight across her stomach as if her other elbow needed the extra support.

“Uh…I…I’m fine. You?”

“We’re alright.”

“Good.”

Silence.

“Look, Mom. I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

“I know you are. Hold on.” He heard the rustle of the phone being taken away from her ear, her hand covering the receiver as muffled voices discussed something. It was his father, probably sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and directing her speech like an acting coach.

“Mom?”

“Michael, I was calling to ask if you’ve made any plans about your cell phone.”

“Huh?”

“Your father and I have been paying the bill since you left, and he…
we
wanted to know when you planned on taking over the payments.”

This was why she called? “Um…shit. I don’t know. I had to cut my hours back a little at the theater because of classes.”

“How are classes?”

“They’re alright. Harder than I thought, but I’m doing okay.”

“Made any new friends?” In other words, do you spend all of your time with Dennis?

“Not really. I mean, there are some guys I talk to in my classes, but we don’t really hang out or anything.”

“Are you eating well?”

“Mom, what are you—”

“Your father and I just thought we’d see if you would like to come over for dinner Friday night.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, of course. What time?”

“You know dinner’s always at seven.”

“Cool. Uh…I guess I’ll see you then.”

More rustling, more muffled speech. “Bring any laundry you need done and I can wash it for you.”

“We have a laundry room here in the building. You guys should come by some time.”

“My washing machine’s fine, dear.”

“No, I meant—”

Rustling. “We’ll see you Friday, Michael.”

“Okay. Yeah. See you then.”

A pause and a click. The call disconnected.

He sat there for several minutes staring at the screen of his phone. He didn’t know what to think of the invitation. He hadn’t spoken to his parents since everything happened.

He should tell Dennis, see what he had to say.

He sat his phone down and stood. His eye caught the supermarket’s doors through the window for just the briefest of seconds.

He turned, and the clock read
8:42pm
.

His head swirled again, the room spinning on an unstable axis. What the hell was happening to him? He careened into the living room.

“Dennis?”

He felt drunk, unstable, as though he weren’t entirely flesh. His mind a wet sponge, eyes covered in a thin veil of cheesecloth, skin draped with a thousand tiny strands of spider-web, tickling him, sapping his will.

What was he doing out here?

Dennis. He stumbled toward his roommate’s door, didn’t bother to knock, shoved it open a little too hard. It swung against the wall with a loud thud, ricocheted, and began to close.

The blanket and sheet were twisted together into a tumor on the bed. A cool breeze blew in through the window, the curtains reaching across the room like a lover’s arms. The rocking chair creaked back and forth, back and forth.

Where the hell was he? He hadn’t left his room in God knew when.

The wind died and the rocking chair stopped moving.

* * *

The sun fought into the basement through dust-stained windows, streaming small waterfalls down to form haphazard pools of light on filthy gray concrete. Tiny eddies of dust danced inside of them, floating down, up, and out in indiscernible patterns. Karen unknowingly stood inside one of these, the light rinsing the white T-shirt that clung to her shape like it was carved from stone, soaking her hair in brilliant flame, sparkling over the green jewels of her eyes. She wore a very short pair of blue gym shorts, her legs growing like well-fed ivy into a pair of sandals. The light bathed over every inch of her, accenting every color and shape on her like the morning sun through a stain-glassed window, and Dennis couldn’t help but stand silent in the shadow of the doorway and watch her pull her soaked clothes from the washer and toss them into the dryer.

When she noticed him she smiled and all of the shadows fled from the room. “Hey. How long have you been there?”

He took a step toward her. “Not long.”

Behind her, he thought he saw eyes watching from the dark. When he looked again they were gone.

She closed the dryer door. “Hey, listen. About that night—”

“Shhh.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her to him. Their lips met and she melted against him. Her skin was on fire.

There was a click. A metallic thud.

They pulled away from one other and turned.

The locks that had fastened the strange door closed had fallen to the floor.

Dennis kissed her again and walked over. He picked one up. “Huh. It’s completely rusted through.”

The door creaked open.

He turned back to her. Her face was flushed, her hands nervously worked at straightening the wrinkles from her shirt.

“Wanna explore?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Why not?”

He took her hand and led her inside.

One tiny window, as filthy as any other in the basement, allowed a single shaft of light to fall into the room, landing on the chair like a spotlight. Its metal frame was seemingly covered in dried blood, though Dennis assumed it was rust like the lock. A faded green pad was loosely fastened to the seat, stuffing bulging out from tiny slits. Leather straps dangled from the arms, an identical pair connected to the front feet.

He glanced to Karen as she made her way around the room. Metal shelves lined the walls, each one covered in thick sheets of dust. Rusted tin cans, old water hoses, and stained tools rested all over. In one corner a thirty-year-old
Charlie’s Angels
poster was crudely taped to the gray brick.

“This chair…” he said, but couldn’t quite finish the thought.

She came over and knelt next to him. Her smell made his head swim. “Jesus. It’s like something from Ed Gein’s basement. What do you think it was used for?”

“The Crossroads…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He stood. She rose beside him. They exchanged a smile and then their hands found each other’s bodies again, their lips following shortly behind.

“This is crazy…” she whispered.

He didn’t say anything, his mouth busy traveling along the muscles of her neck. He was dreaming, he knew it now, his mind acting with the same sluggish impulses that it did when Allison visited him.

His hand slid up her shirt, found her nipple. She moaned and pressed against him, her fingers guiding his mouth back up to hers.

Something moved behind her, a shadow passing through shadows. He could feel eyes on them and didn’t care.

He cupped the backs of her thighs and lifted her, spinning, the basement swirling around them like a tempest, pressing her tighter against him as he came to rest in the chair, her legs maneuvering her into a better position, warm thighs squeezing his hips, velvet hair falling around his face, the exotic scent of her crashing over him like a wave, her hands on his chest, his on her thighs, pressing against each other, not able to get close enough, trying to force themselves together until they were one creature.

The pressure in the room shifted and Dennis felt like hundreds of people had come to watch. Let them, he thought. It’s just a dream, right? He was certain of it now—it was too similar to Eileen’s dream.

Thinking of Eileen sent a pang of guilt through him. Karen’s mouth on his neck erased it.

Through half-lidded eyes he saw movement in the basement, shadows stepping forward and back in the darkness, shuffling with nervous excitement.

Karen’s nails scratched him as they wrenched his shirt up and off, her lips pressing against his chest and abdomen like a warm sponge. He saw the boy who hid behind washing machines and in the depths of the pool, his hair slicked to his head and his skin bloated, over-filled, whatever was inside ready to split the seams of his blue-tinged flesh and spill out onto the ground like the slimy cold water leaking from his mouth.

She worked at unfastening his pants and he marveled at her appetite. She smiled up and the glazed look in her green-jeweled eyes told him that she was here too, was a part of this wonderful dream where inhibitions had been expelled like runoff floating downriver.

He saw a group of men in filthy gray coats, their faces covered with shadow, huddling close together on the edge of the darkness, shuffling as they whispered to one another. He saw something white and malicious, its skin reeking of rotten fish, as it moved between the cracks in the darkness. He saw eyes that he was certain could not be human, that had to be canine, staring out from the black with a hunger deeper than he would ever know.

Karen took him into her mouth, her lips like pillows. He clutched the arms of the chair with exquisite desperation and gasped.

There was Dr. Whaley and his octoroon mistress in the corner, the shadows draped around them like sheets on a lover’s bed, her naked caramel body pressed against the wall, his bearded mouth suckling at her breasts like a starving newborn, both of them watching Dennis and Karen, watching and approving, aroused to frenzy, lustful, hungry.

Dennis’ body quaked and shook. Karen removed her mouth and replaced it with her hand. He moaned as his hips bucked and his seed spread onto the floor below him.

—Ye have spilled offering

and shall reap the rewards—

He grabbed Karen, pulled her to his mouth, spun her into the chair. Behind him a thousand feet shuffled in anticipation. He placed a foot on his shoulder, kissed her ankle, lips trailing down her calf and her thigh. He wrapped his fingers in the soft cloth of her shorts and slid them free, kissed his way back down her thigh, her body clenching tight and lungs sucking in a sharp breath as he moved in.

The door creaked shut.

Her fingers wrapped around the arms of the chair, her pelvis grinding against his face as he worked. The smell of her perfume drowned him, her perfume and the smell of dirt, of a freshly turned grave.

Allison stood behind the chair, her fingers running through Karen’s hair. She smiled.

The straps came to life, gripping Karen’s wrists, pulling them tight against the chair. She didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Allison’s hands rubbed Dennis’ back, crawled underneath his shirt, pressed deep into the muscles there. Her fingers parted his skin and slid into him.

—Fuck her, my darling—

Dennis rose from his knees and jerked Karen forward, the chair screeching across the concrete. He placed her calves on his shoulders and slid himself inside of her.

The others in his dream crowded closer, their breath hot on his back as they watched. Their shapes melted into one another until a sea of blackness surrounded them.

He thrust.

Karen bucked her hips hard against him. She closed her eyes, threw her head back, the muscles in her neck bulging, the veins in her arms standing out against her flesh as she gripped the arms of the chair tighter, tighter, until finally Allison pressed closer into him, inside of him,
through
him, and the pressure building in him grew too strong, and he released it, sending hot fire into Karen with an intensity he had never known.

She screamed.

The shadows retreated.

Dennis pulled back, fell to his knees in exhaustion. Their bodies glistened with one another’s sweat.

Her head rolled forward, damp hair falling around her shoulders.

The leather straps loosened and fell away.

She smiled at him and opened her eyes, cold blue eyes shining like the sun reflected from a frozen lake.

Her scent was flowers, lilac, strawberries, and something exotic. Underneath that was the faint scent of dirt.

“Darling,” she said and kissed him.

Chapter Fourteen

From Margot Deschaine’s Journal:

As I write this, I have the strange feeling it will be the last words I ever set to paper. The dreams have bloomed again, terrible blossoms crowding my head at night and pulling me, sweatdrenched and breath-starved, from my sleep.

I pretend they’ve been absent for some time, but that’s one of the bigger lies I have told myself. They’ve always been there, lurking around in my subconscious, watching, waiting for a time they could force their way up.

What happened here to cause it this time?

I have come to think of myself as a storyteller in that grand Southern tradition, gathering the macabre tales that flow through this place like a fisherman who sits on a riverbank catching every runt that swims by while waiting for the Big One. I always thought someday I would write a novel, or even a book of poems. I fear now that this diary will be the sole artifact of my life.

The bits of the story here are strange and varied, wild snippets of cloth that, when sewn together, create a Coat of Many Colors no child would wish to wear. I spoke to Jack about it once and he swears it began with a group of Natives slaughtering one another here. My guess is that it stretches back further, if only we knew the prehistoric oral legendry of this place.

Yet each of these things was simply a precursor to the next, a signpost along a sad and tragic trail. The slaughter beget Camp Opey, which beget doctors who thought this particular hill of all the hills in Tennessee would be a good place for thousands of tuberculosis patients to die, who beget poor Dr. Whaley and Calliope, who beget that crane’s unfortunate mechanical malfunction, who beget the Crossroads Killer, who beget the Blue Boy, who beget whatever horror is waiting in the halls of this place now, ready to make itself known at any moment.