Read Michael R Collings Online
Authors: The Slab- A Novel of Horror (retail) (epub)
Finished, he turned and looked over the specimen room. He enjoyed the room. It brought back memories. Everything here was as it should be. Everything in place, just as always.
No, not quite everything.
A scrap of white cloth jutted out from beneath the desk opposite the closet.
Can’t have that, Abe thought. Got to get this place spick and span. I think I’ll have Ellen and...and...whatshisname...sleep in here this time. Let Jay and Linda have the good bed.
Still puzzled as to what the bit of cloth might be, Abe leaned over and picked it up. The movement made his ears buzz and a wave of dizziness made him stumble. He nearly struck his head against the sharp edge of the desk, but caught himself just in time.
He held the cloth out, studying it, turning it over and over in his hands until he finally recognized it—and felt embarrassed when he realized how puzzled he had been by something so simple as a pair of undershorts.
Probably one of the boys’ from last time they came.
But that was months ago. Abe was certain that he’d cleaned up since then. Why had he missed them all that time?
His hand closed over the material. It was oddly stiff in places, and for an instant Abe fluttered on the verge of remembering something more, something from his own youth so far back that he rarely ventured to visit there, even in memory.
He held the underwear in his hand and stared out the window for a long, long time.
Then he heard a sound. Two sounds, actually.
He turned toward the closet. The girls were sitting in there, sitting on the rollaway that he was sure he had closed up just moments before—but now their faces glowed with the vivid scarlet of a cloudy November sunset where the light poured through the window behind him.
Abe stiffened in horror.
The girls were naked. Sitting naked on the bed and crying, as if he had done something to them
how could he have done anything he just came inhere to clean a minute ago then how come it’s dark outside old man, and how come they’re crying and cringing from you in terror in horror but he’d never even considered even thought of touching them not once not ever may God strike me dead this instant if I ever even thought but they were crying
and the buzzing and the pain and the dizziness struck again with so much force that Abe stumbled backward, striking his back sharply against a filing cabinet. No
no no no
he wailed silently as the girls suddenly turned to face him, their eyes accusing and bright with hatred, their heads crowned with haloes of blood that ran slowly down their cheeks and dripped onto their bodies.
“No no no no no,” he wailed, but this time out loud as the buzzing increased until it was no longer inside his head but outside, in the room with him. His eyes darted around the room. Everything was moving. Wings fluttering, beaks clacking viciously, eyes opening and closing, talons stretching, paws extruding needle-sharp claws. The walls were a wash of movement, silent and threatening and angular. Shadow struggled with light, and even the once-familiar forms of ground squirrels and robins and sparrows enlarged and rustled toward him.
He tried to whirl away, but the pain and the dizziness came a third time. The last time.
This pain was an explosion that rocked his chest and hammered the breath from his body. He thrust his hand out to steady himself on the bookshelf. His fingers touched something hard and cold and ridged. The buzzing increased, only now it concentrated itself in a single focus.
As the rattlesnake struck—once, viciously, pumping poison from its glittering fangs into the old man’s frail wrist—Abe heard shrieks of laughter from the darkness that was the closet. He struggled to penetrate the darkness, to see whether the girls were gone, but he could not. Instead, the darkness reached out and touched him, penetrated his confusion and his terror and his loneliness.
And then there was only darkness.
And silence.
From the
The Sun—San Bernardino and the Inland Empire,
1 November 1994:
YOUTH FOUND DEAD IN HOME,
FOUL PLAY NOT SUSPECTED
The body of Brady Wilton, 12, was found in his Redlands home late last night by his parents, Frank and Julia Wilton, shortly after they returned from a costume party at Wilton’s company, Alexander and Wilton Electronics, in nearby Mentone.
“They were only away for an hour or so,” a neighbor, Benjamin Morely, revealed. “Frank owns the place, you know, and they really had to be there.” Brady was a careful and responsible young man, Morely added, fully capable of taking care of himself.
Another neighbor and a classmate of young Wilton’s, Roland Elkins, also 12, said, “He was moody sometimes, withdrawn. He could get angry easy, too, especially the last few weeks. He wouldn’t even go Trick-or-Treating with kids from the neighborhood.”
Preliminary reports from the coroner’s office suggest young Wilton may have died from a stroke. “It’s quite rare in children this young,” a county representative revealed, “but it does happen.”
The Wiltons, who moved with Brady to Redlands three years ago from Tamarind Valley, near Los Angeles, are not currently under investigation for any….
The Huntleys, March 2010
Further Complications
1.
As matters turned out, Willard’s estimate of somewhere around a month before any action could be taken on the house was dead on.
After three weeks of abruptly summer-like weather, typical of the typically Quixotic California climate, the ground finally dried sufficiently to allow any sort of testing. Catherine called and made an appointment to have one of the city engineers come out and examine the slab. But before he could arrive, another, seemingly unrelated, crisis struck.
It began simply enough.
Midday Saturday was a lazy time, school work done for the week, chores done, and nothing much to do. The four children were playing in the back bedroom, immersed in their own fantasy worlds of toys and books.
Willard was watching football in the family room. Catherine was puttering around in the kitchen.
In the middle of a particularly exciting play, Willard glanced toward the door from the entry way, almost as if he had been called. Burt was standing there, expectantly, as if he had something to say.
“What?” Willard was irritated at the interruption, even though the boy had said nothing yet. His voice was sharp, his expression almost angry. “What?”
Burt remained silent for a second, then faded back into the duskiness as he slipped into the living room. Willard watched until his son disappeared, his forehead creased and his eyes narrowed, even though he was not aware of it.
That was his usual expression nowadays.
A moment or so later, he heard Burt’s thin voice in the kitchen. He couldn’t catch the words. Catherine responded, then Burt.
Willard settled back into the couch again, intent on the game.
Catherine came to the door between the kitchen and the family room.
“Burt says he can hear a funny noise.”
“Hmmm,” Willard said.
“He says it’s coming from the bathroom. Maybe you should….”
In the recesses of the house, Suze screamed, Will, Jr., yelped as if in surprise, and Sams, not to be outdone, started crying.
“Oh, for…! What’s going on now!” Willard was up and striding toward the hallway before Catherine even left the kitchen.
“It better be something important,” Willard muttered as he turned the corner in the hall and glanced toward the back bedroom doors.
The bathroom door, situated on the opposite side of the hall, midway between the open doors to Suze’s room and the boys’ room, was closed. The hall was dimly lit, as usual, but it seemed like the carpet at the end of the hall was far darker than it should be.
And Willard could hear a distinctive gurgling from the bathroom.
“Oh shit!” He stamped down the hall, his footsteps echoing his incipient anger. It couldn’t be….
It was.
He shoved the bathroom door open, but already he had heard the
squish
of water beneath his feet as he crossed the sodden carpet, so he wasn’t surprised when he flicked the light on to see water spilling over the top of the toilet bowl. The floor tiles were an inch deep in the stuff, and the runoff was apparently following the path of least resistance, out the door, across the hall, and into the boy’s room.
The toilet was spewing gallons of water, it seemed, fortunately clear enough but tinged faintly with not-quite green, not-quite brown against the white porcelain He sniffed reflexively, testing the air. Something…faint, but unidentifiable. Repellent in its own way, but definitely not sewage.
Willard ran over to the toilet, knelt on the flooded floor, cursed under his breath as his knees went suddenly cold and wet, and struggled to twist the ball valve and shut off the flow. It resisted for a couple of moments, while time the water continued to gush over the toilet rim, onto him, onto the floor.
“Catherine,” he yelled, still fighting the valve. “Catherine! Towels. Quick!”
Behind him, he could hear the linen closet door screak open, then shut, then the soft
thump
as Catherine threw towels over the threshold in a futile attempt to hold back the flood. Too little, too late, Willard thought.
Finally, with a thick, unpleasant squeal, the valve turned and the water slowly tapered off, then stopped completely.
He stood, dripping from the knees down, hands chilled to the bone, face flushed with anger and frustration. What next?
“The boys’ carpet is wet about halfway across the room, but the other bedrooms are dry,” Catherine reported while laying another layer of towels in the hall.
Willard stood in the boys’ doorway. The dark brown carpet was almost black in a quarter circle that extended from the door as far as the closet. The boy’s bunk beds stood partially in the circle, as did their dresser. Sams’ little box bed seemed dry, and there didn’t seem to be any problem with the low table underneath the window that held a scattering of their toys, Yap’s cage, and assorted detritus of cast-off clothing.
“Okay, guys,” Willard said, sighing. “Let’s get busy.”
While Catherine mopped up the bathroom and the younger kids were relegated to the family room to watch a DVD, Willard, Will, Jr., and Burt began the tedious task of moving everything out of the bedroom—Sams’ bed; the dresser drawers, one by one; the toys and clothing that had been lying on the floor and were now either sopping wet or still dry but to Catherine’s mind contaminated and therefore to be removed. With a curl of his lip, as if he smelled something extremely distasteful, Burt dumped wet things into a plastic laundry basket just beyond the damp edge of the hall carpet. Will, Jr., stripped all of the beds and, careful not to let any edges trail, hauled the bedding by the armful into the family room to toss it in a corner behind the couch.
The only problem came when he entered the family room carrying Sams’ blanket, crossed the room, and tossed the grubby, smelly thing into the washer.
“Nooo,” Sams screamed, and Catherine had to race in from the back and comfort him, reassuring him that the blanket was only going to be gone a little while.
“Gone away, like Yip, forever?” Sams demanded.
“No, sweetie, not like Yip. You’ll have it back fresh and clean before the movie’s over.”
It helped, but Sams spent the rest of the hour standing guard over the washer, then the dryer, until finally his blanket emerged safe and sound. He curled up on the corner of the couch, sating edging in his mouth, and promptly fell asleep.
That was probably for the best, since tempers were rapidly becoming shorter and shorter, and he was out of the way, at least.
A sharp yelp came from the back bedroom.
Catherine raced back to find Willard standing in the center of the room, water squishing out around the soles of his shoes. He was nursing a bloody finger, his good hand holding the injured one away from his body to keep his shirt from getting stained. The wound had already bled profusely enough to stain his hand red and drip onto the floor. Sodden as it was with the overflowing water, the carpet seemed to absorb the drops almost immediately, as if drinking them.
“What happened?” Catherine took one look and turned around to retrieve the first aid kit from the top shelf of the linen closet. She grabbed a dry hand towel as well—all of the larger ones were spread on the floor to draw up the water.
“I caught my finger between the bedpost and the tip of the screwdriver when I tried to loosen the back bolts on Will’s bunk, and sliced myself all to hell.” He extended his hands so Catherine could see the injury better. “I’m going to have to dismantle the whole bed to get it out of here. We’re going to have to take the carpet and the padding out as well. They’re too wet to dry back here without molding or something.”
Catherine muttered soothing non-words as she worked on his finger, wiping away the blood and cleaning the slash.
“It’s not too deep, it just bled like crazy,” Willard assured her absently while scanning the floor. Finally she finished wrapping the wound in a thick gauze bandage. Actually, the injury looked fairly serious. They might have to get Willard to the hospital, she thought.
“Come on out and sit down,” Catherine said, tugging gently at his sleeve. “You can’t do this alone, and Will’s too little to be much good at moving the heavier furniture. I’ll see if any of the neighbors can help.”
2.
Even though the Huntleys had only lived on Oleander Place for a couple of months, they were well enough known and well enough liked that it didn’t take long for a crew of half a dozen men to show up and start work, with a couple of their wives to assist in the cleanup. Piece by piece, the men hauled mattresses, box springs, the wooden frame of the dresser, the low table, then bits and pieces of the bunk beds through the family room and into the garage, stacking everything neatly along the wall.
Willard tried to help, but his hand really was starting to throb and he felt dizzy every time he went into the bedroom, so finally he took Catherine’s advice—all the while glum, grudging, and frustrated—and remained in the family room. It grated on his nerves, though, whenever one of the men carried another piece through to the garage.
I should be helping them. It’s my damned house. I should be able to take care of it. I shouldn’t have to call on neighbors and then sit here like a cripple while they do all the work.
Finally, the men reported that, except for the clothing hanging in the closet and the pictures on the wall, the room was empty.
“Want us to rip up the carpet as well?” Ned Wilcox asked. “I used to work as a carpet layer to pay for college. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Let me come back and see,” Willard said. He could help with that at least.
At the threshold of the bedroom, he surveyed the damage.
The faint odor he had detected earlier in the bathroom seemed stronger now, even though most of the overflow had been sopped up in the hall and the bedroom.
He wrinkled his nose and took a deep breath. The air was damp, musty, almost dank, as if it belonged in a old earth-floored, spider-web encrusted cellar. The odor was sharp, acidic, not quite strong enough to draw attention to itself but easily noticeable if one concentrated.
The most obvious result of the spill, however, was clearly evident, now that the carpet had been removed.
Arcing from the corner diagonal to the door to midway along the closet wall, a jagged crack showed stark and black against the concrete. On the far side of the break, the floor was stone dry, the typical grey of cement, with occasional dark brown rough spots where the padding had been glued down. Nothing unusual there, except for an inch-wide fissure along the back wall, perhaps two inches in from the floorboards—the extension of the crack Willard had first noticed in the living room and traced further in the kitchen. Now it was evident that the crack continued the entire length of the back wall. If he removed the carpet in the fifth bedroom—Willard’s office—he would no doubt find the same condition along the wall there.
On the near side of the break, however, the floor was still damp, almost black, with an odd sheen that suggested that it would be slippery. It looked miasmal, unhealthy.
Willard stepped into the room.
The floor wasn’t slippery at all, he was surprised to discover, but he could tell that it would take a while longer for it to dry completely. The kids would have to camp out in the family room for a couple of days, he realized.
Wilcox and one of the other men—Willard thought his last name was Kemp—stepped into the room after him.
“That’s some crack you got,” Wilcox said.
“Kind of reminds me of the Grand Canyon,” Kemp added. “Just not quite as wide or as deep.”
Willard nodded.
Wilcox moved past Willard and Kemp, toward the far corner where the crack began. He seemed to be pacing, measuring something.
He turned and looked at each of the other corners in turn, then at Willard and Kemp.
“You’ve got a bit of a slope in here, too,” he said. “I figure a good three, four inches difference between the door over there and this corner.” He gestured at the crack. “If it weren’t for that, the water would probably have run clear across the room, under the wall, and up into the studs. Could have been a real problem.”
Willard nodded.
Wilcox pointed along the back wall. “And you got another problem there,” indicating where the wall had separated from the foundation. “Never seen anything like that before.”
Then he brushed his hands against the sides of his pants, as if getting rid of a layer of dust or something, and said, “Anything else we can do for you, Huntley?”
Willard shook his head. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to speak. Perhaps because actually seeing the fissure running across the entire width of the room had startled him, perhaps because he was already fuming—yet again—at the incredible ineptitude, or worse, of the builders. And perhaps because he understood that whatever was happening here, whatever would be needed to make this place livable for him and his family might just be beyond his ability to fix.
3.
The city engineer arrived the next Wednesday.
The boys were still sleeping in the family room—they had constructed a make-shift tent of chairs, quilts, and sheets in one corner and sheets and seemed perfectly happy to stay there for the rest of their lives. Sams was especially pleased with the arrangements. He would sit just under the front flap of the tent, blanket in hand, and watch the television, giggling to himself at some secret joke.
Yap seemed equally content in his new place on the wide window sill. He spent hours, it seemed, whirling around in the exercise wheel, the small
whirr
becoming an integral part of the atmosphere in the room.
The carpet and padding were still laid out in the garage. Thanks to the unusual weather, the garage was overheated for this time of year, hot and stuffy. The padding seemed dry, but the carpet retained an unpleasant stickiness when touched. Perhaps a couple more days would be enough, then it could be re-laid.
Willard answered the doorbell with a sense both of anticipation and of incipient foreboding. Whatever was going on with the house, at least the inspector would know.