13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors (11 page)

The piece of lined paper
inside had been folded over several times. On one side, it simply
read
MARY
. On the
other,
THIS WON’T MAKE SENSE. IF THE
BASEMENT DOOR IS OPEN, LEAVE. IF THERE’S NO BAD SMELL, OPEN THE
INSTANT COFFEE JAR. IF THERE IS, OPEN THE TEA.

Mary was taken aback, but she had
entered into this in the spirit of curiosity. The urge to get out
of there as quickly as possible was weaker than the desire to know
exactly what was going on. There had been no obvious reek when
she’d entered the house but, to be certain, she took a long sniff,
feeling a little silly as she did. Nothing. Just the smell of a
house left empty. She turned off the tap and went through the
kitchen cupboards until she found the instant coffee. Sure enough,
another small plastic bag with another small piece of paper. She
opened this up and took a seat at the kitchen table.

I NEED YOU TO KNOCK ON THE
BASEMENT DOOR.

She turned the paper
over.
MORE INSTRUCTIONS IN THE KNIFE
DRAWER
.

This one was a puzzler. For a moment
she wondered if Theo was playing some kind of long distance game
with her, or if he really was in New York at all. Would he really
play an elaborate prank on her? She didn’t think he cared enough to
do that. Just to be on the safe side, she opened the drawer and
found the next clue first. Deciding against opening it first, more
in the spirit of the game than anything else, she walked over to
the other end of the kitchen and knocked on the door. The noise was
startlingly loud in the silent house and she instinctively took a
step back.

“
This is ridiculous,” she
muttered to herself, and stepped back to the door, putting her ear
to the wood. Nothing. “OK…”

She opened the next note. This one was
longer and more detailed, and made her wonder if she’d made the
right choice coming here.

IF YOU HEARD NOTHING,
KNOCK AGAIN. LOUDER. IF THERE’S STILL NOTHING, LEAVE. IF YOU HEAR
SOMETHING, FIND THE NOTE IN THE OVEN.

Something wasn’t right. This was no
hungry pet situation. There was no broken boiler to be checked. But
she couldn’t very well turn around and leave now. She knocked again
on the door, harder this time. Nothing. She hit the door as hard as
she could. Pressing her ear against the wood, she heard something.
Faint. A rattle. Something metal. Then she heard a
cough.

She pulled back from the
door. She moved quickly over to the oven, pulled open the door and
found a plastic bag taped to the bottom, ignoring the grease and
blackened debris that got under her fingernails.
THERE’S FOOD IN THE FRIDGE.

While she stood, staring at the note,
she heard a cry. A voice from the basement, a girl’s voice, cried
out. It was crying for help. She clenched her fists, crumpling the
note, and took a knife from the drawer. Whatever the hell her
brother had done had nothing to do with her, but she wasn’t the
kind of person to leave a situation like this. Above the basement
door she found a set of keys which fit the locks on the door.
Belatedly, she wondered why anyone would need to lock a
basement.

Standing at the top of the stairs, the
basement went deeper than she’d expected. She flicked the light
switch, and nothing happened. As she took the first step down, she
saw something move quickly out of sight. It looked like a hand. She
moved slowly down the steps, using the light from her phone to
illuminate the room.

There, in the corner, she saw the
source of the noise. A young blonde woman, barely in her twenties,
was chained to the far wall. In the muck and dirt of the room, the
locks on her hands and feet were pristine. She looked terrifyingly
skinny. Blood had caked where the locks rubbed her skin. She wore a
red evening dress. She had dressed up, before all this had
happened. She had turned her head away from Mary as far as it would
go, but turned when Mary muttered, “Jesus Christ
almighty.”

At this, the young woman turned, her
eyes and mouth open wide. “Help me!” she rasped. “Please, you have
to get me out of here. You have to get me out of here before he
comes back!”

Mary moved to the young woman’s side.
“Jesus Christ almighty,” she repeated. “What has he done to
you?”

“
Please!” repeated the
woman, crying now. “Please, get me out of here!”

“
It’s alright,” answered
Mary. “He’s not here, he’s not coming back. Tell me what
happened.”

The woman sobbed. She told Mary that
she had been on her way to a party and had got lost. “It was
raining so hard. He stopped in his car and said he could help me
find a phone. He seemed nice. He talked about his wife and kids. He
said he had a little girl and a little boy. He asked me if I liked
the music and then…then I woke up and I couldn’t move.”

“
Has he done…anything?”
Mary asked, dreading the answer.

“
No. He just kept me here.
He won’t let me out. Please, please call the police.”

Mary stood, the full realisation of
what her brother had done sinking in. “This is…this is horrible,”
she said to herself. “I can’t believe…my brother…”

“
Your brother?” screeched
the woman. “Your fucking brother did this to me? You have to let me
go! You have to let me out!”

“
I’m really sorry,” said
Mary. “This isn’t how we were raised, you understand.”

The woman looked up, her eyes wide in
disbelief. “I don’t give a fuck!” I don’t give a fuck! You need to
let me go, you need to call the police!”

Mary bent down and brushed the hair
from the woman’s eyes. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” she
asked.

“
What does it matter?”
answered the woman. “It’s Rose, what the fuck difference does that
make?”

“
None, I suppose,” answered
Mary. “But I want you to know, Rose, that this isn’t how we were
brought up. We were taught to do it quickly. I don’t know what
Theo’s playing at.”

Rose opened her mouth to answer, and
Mary slid the knife across her throat. “There’s no need,” she said,
as the blood poured over Rose’s chest, the look of confusion on her
face freezing. “There’s just no need.”

Mary found a piece of plastic sheet in
the garage and covered Rose’s body. She went back upstairs and
drank the glass of water. Before she left, she wiped down the
surfaces she had touched. She had been taught to clean up her
mess.

The traffic was bad on the way back.
Mary thought briefly about what Theo must be thinking, up in the
air and fretting, before deciding that she didn’t particularly
care. She had a long shower, drank a bottle of red wine, watched
some bad TV and slept for ten hours. She had been taught to
properly unwind. When she woke up, she made herself a cooked
breakfast, packed with grease she wouldn’t normally allow herself.
When she’d eaten and drunk the contents of a cafetiere, Mary opened
her emails. There was one marked urgent from Theo.

You had no right
it said simply.

Neither did you
she wrote, and pressed send.

9. GONE
FOR GOOD

Vinny Negron, United
States

I
made a rare appearance at Kenny’s house one night after a
particularly shitty argument with Maria. Kenny answered the door
with a smile. He reached out, locked my hand in his, and yanked me
into a bear hug. A muscled arm draped around my shoulder, he led me
into the living room, where David, Larry, Cesar and Strings were
playing beer pong.

Kenny pointed to Strings. “First you
crawl out from your wormhole or whatever the fuck, now this dude
shows up like the prodigal son.”

I took a pull off a bottle of tequila
Larry offered me, and then grabbed a beer from a cooler. I could
see that the old crew was already twisted in the way that was
common during my college years, and it was refreshing. While
college wasn’t yet a distant memory for me, the corporate job, the
relationship, the step-daddying, had made me the oldest
twenty-three-year-old I know.

Strings bounced across the room toward
me. He wore a tight-ass Iron Man T-shirt that accentuated his man
boobs. On the right side of his neck was a tattoo of the Mets logo.
Similar Queens-inspired tats inked his forearms, including a
sprawling depiction of Ralph’s Diner, the local greasy
spoon.

“
Nino,” he said, and
swallowed me into a hug. He smelled of perspiration, weed and
cigarettes. He maintained his hold on me for a long time, and I let
him. Once, we were inseparable and insufferable. Two knuckleheads,
the McBride Street derelicts known for causing trouble and setting
shit on fire. That was before I left for college, and before his
mother committed him to Bellevue. A lot of years had passed between
us without a word. It was good to see him now, as last I heard, a
nervous breakdown had made him a pariah.

We hadn’t exchanged more than a few
“How you beens” before Kenny came between us.

“
Let me talk to my boy for
a sec,” he said to Strings. “Need the man’s advice on a refinance.”
And with that, he led me to the kitchen, his arm across my
shoulders.

He opened a Corona with his teeth and
slid it across the countertop. Kenny was only recently out of the
army after two tours in Afghanistan. It was good to see him looking
happy. I drained my beer and picked up the fresh one with a
nod.

Kenny looked me in the eye.

“
You know homeboy ain’t all
there, right?” he said.

“
He seems cool.”

“
He has his moments, but
don’t let him fool you. Dude is seven-thirty.”

“
He was always a little
off.”

“
True,” he said. “But it’s
different now. I know you two got history, that’s why I’m telling
you. It’s not like it used to be—not with him.”

“
You think he’s
dangerous?”

Kenny paused before saying, “Yeah. To
me, instability in the dome piece is dangerous.”

“
Then why’s he
here?”

“
He’s still TGH,” he said,
a hint of sadness in his voice. “Know what I mean?”

I nodded. TGH, short for “The Group
Home” is what we used to call our crew.

“
And I’m pretty sure we’re
all he’s got,” he said.

Kenny lifted his bottle and I did the
same.

“
It’s good to see you, man.
Here’s to The Group Home,” he said.

We touched bottles and drained our
beers.

“
Speaking of The Group
Home, I gotta make some calls. Let’s get stupid up in
here.”

About an hour later, Kenny’s house was
packed. The party moved into the backyard, where a keg had
materialized. A DJ arrived and set up on the patio. He spun mostly
old-school rap of the sing-along variety like Doug E. Fresh and
Snoop Dog. It was after two in the morning when Strings found me on
the edge of a picnic table bobbing my head and mouthing the words
to Biggie’s “Hypnotize.” We hadn’t spoken much that night, and I
could tell something was on his mind. He stood over me with
unfocused eyes.

“
Cesar’s about to cartwheel
through a ring of fire,” he said. “And they call me
crazy.”

“
Means five-oh will be here
soon.”

“
You know it.”

I stood and wobbled. I took hold of
Strings’s forearm to steady myself.

“
Dude, why’s your arm
colder than a witch’s tit?”

He held up a can of Shock
Top.

“
This was at the bottom of
the cooler,” he said. “Had to dig for it.”

“
For a second there I
thought you were undead.”

“
Alive and well, my
friend.”

“
Good.”

I swallowed the last of a
vodka-cranberry and set the plastic cup on the picnic
table.

“
I should get going,” I
said.

“
Give a brother a
lift?”

“
Sure.”

We left quietly, skirting the crowd,
avoiding the drunken good-byes. As we neared my Jeep, I could hear
Cesar calling for help, and over his cries was Kenny’s voice,
directing Cesar to stop, drop and roll.

● ● ●

ON
the drive over to his house, Strings sat way back in the
bucket seat, his legs extended and crossed at the ankles on top of
my dashboard. Under the light of a streetlamp, I noticed a
four-inch gash across his calf muscle.

“
Fuck happened to
you?”

“
You wouldn’t believe me,”
he said.

“
Pamber cut you? I’d
believe that.”

“
She still hates you, you
know.”

“
Feeling’s mutual,” I said.
“I was hoping she was dead.”

“
That’s harsh,
bro.”

I downshifted as I made the left onto
Mott Avenue.

“
You still
together?”

“
On and off. Mostly off. I
haven’t seen her in a few months.”

“
Probably for the
best.”