by Jim Johanson
Mary found her way to the back door. The screen was gone completely, torn off at the hinges and set aside the house. She found the gaps where Billy had removed the boards. There was enough room to squeeze through underneath the section where the boards crossed above the unlocked doorknob. The rough edges of the boards scraped at her jeans as she passed through into the darkened house.
The house had taken on a horrendous stench, like rotting meat and decay. An animal must have gotten inside and died, she imagined. All the furniture was still in place, though covered now by a dense layer of grime and dust. The ceiling bowed inward, evidence of a significant leak in the roof. Water had repeatedly soaked into the carpet and dried out, giving rise to patches of black mold.
With the windows and doors boarded up, it was as dark inside as it had ever been. Mary moved easily by muscle memory, passing through the kitchen and the family room until she came to the room formerly occupied by her mother. Thankfully, the door was closed. Surely the crime scene investigators had cleaned the room and removed its contents, though Mary still shuddered to imagine what it looked like inside. The door seemed like a foreboding obelisk, a sentient guardian separating Mary from the horror of Mother’s room. She moved past it down the hallway, feeling as though the door were watching her as she walked away, like the eerie feeling of knowing that someone is standing in the room without having seen or heard them.
Her room was undisturbed, everything exactly where she’d left it, aside from a small, wooden jewelry box placed on her dresser. The pristine condition of her room, compared to the rest of the house, made it seem as though she were looking back in time, to a story of a person who lived there long ago, a person who no longer exists, like a character in a forgotten novel of a book never to again be read.
Mary approached the jewelry box, curious as to what Billy left her. Her pale hand found the tiny, tarnished metal latch and flipped it open with the edge of her painted fingernail. The lid popped open to reveal two of her baby teeth, seated on plush red velvet, the plush resembling gums attached to the teeth. She could almost feel the sting she’d felt as a child of the teeth being knocked out when her father had drunkenly pulled out the table chair that collided with her mouth.
Mary picked up the box and walked back to the kitchen. She pressed on the garbage can lever with her foot, which opened the lid. She gave the teeth a final look before dropping them into the can. The box sounded a clang against the metal that seemed especially loud in the otherwise silent house. Mary felt satisfaction at closing the garbage can lid, the teeth hidden permanently out of view.
The teeth didn’t belong to her anymore. She wasn’t that person anymore. Maybe, she thought, this was Billy’s way of forcing her to reach closure. She could either keep the teeth and stay attached to her former life, or get rid of them forever and in turn be freed from any remainder of her past. The choice was obvious.
Suddenly the door to Mother’s room snapped open. The disheveled, looming figure of Michael Consolo filled the doorway ominously, rubbing his face as though he’d just woken disturbed from a deep sleep.
Mary gasped inaudibly and twisted around to hide behind a wall.
Did he see me?
There was no way for Mary to cross over to the back door where she’d come in without Consolo seeing her. She felt his heavy footsteps thudding against the floor, the decrepit floorboards sinking with each step. All the other exits were boarded up. There was only one place to go.
Mary slipped her fingers in between the tiny gap between the basement door and the frame, pulling the door open as silently as possible. The basement was so dark she could barely see the old wooden steps leading down, but she had no choice. Consolo was coming.
She stepped inside and let the door close gently behind her. She quickly slunk down the stairs, her hand following a loose wooden handrail. There were two windows at the far end of the basement, but they’d accumulated so much dust over years of disrepair that barely any light passed through. Mary’s foot touched down on the cement floor with a splash. Murky water had leaked in and accumulated about an inch deep, soaking into boxes and stacks of newspaper and magazines, rotting everything and providing sustenance for the black mold that now permeated nearly every item stored in the basement.
Mary heard the squeaking of the rusty doorknob above her. She darted out of view, getting behind the open stairs, looking for any sort of cover or anything she could use to protect herself.
Her eyes had begun to adjust to the dim lighting. She spotted her father’s old work bench in the far corner and made her way over to it.
The door upstairs closed. Mary wondered if Consolo had just locked her down there. Had her escape plan just become her tomb? No time to wonder. She rummaged through everything she could find on the workbench, pulling out drawers, most of them empty or filled with nothing but old screws and bolts. There was a larger drawer at the bottom. She yanked it open.
Pliers. Socket wrench. Level. Oil. She threw them all aside.
Underneath the miscellaneous items she found a half-full can of spray paint. Mary plucked it out of the drawer. She caught her finger on something jagged. Wincing, she squinted her eyes and felt around cautiously in the drawer. The object felt like heavy iron. She lifted it up to get a better look. It was Dad’s bear trap. He used to set it out at the edge of the woods, drinking beers and waiting for some animal to come wandering by, laughing at its misfortune when the trap snapped shut before shooting the animal and cooking it for dinner.
Mary heard footsteps upstairs. Dust crackled down into her hair from the boards of the ceiling. She had to move quickly. Mary ran underneath the stairs and flipped the bear trap open. The locking mechanism clicked into place, its metal teeth were ready to snap into place with enough force to fracture the ankle of a full-grown black bear.
Just as she was about to slide the trap into place at the bottom of the stairs, the door reopened and a flashlight clicked on at the top of the steps. Mary cursed under her breath. He was descending the stairs, slowly, one foot after the other alongside the four-legged cane.
“Billy,” he grunted. “I know that’s you. Have you been a good boy? I’ve got something here for you. It’s a reward, for everything you’ve done. I promise I’m not mad. We’re friends… you and I… why don’t you come out?”
Consolo got halfway down the stairs, bent forward and scanned the basement with the flashlight, with Mary directly underneath him. Mary caught a glimpse of a kitchen knife stuffed into his belt, the tip pointing downward ominously in the direction of her face. There was no time to wait. He was going to find her.
Mary reached up through the open steps and grabbed the bottom of the cane, pulling as hard as she could. Consolo stumbled and caught himself on the handrail. The cane fell to the ground, followed by the flashlight. The flashlight’s bulb shattered when it hit the floor. Mary tumbled backward. Consolo struggled to hold on to the railing, his left arm still mostly useless. After managing to balance himself, still leaning on the handrail, he pulled the kitchen knife from his belt. With the shifting of his weight, the old handrail snapped in two and he fell forward to the wet cement floor.
Mary lifted herself up in a frenzy. Unable to see the can of spray paint, she fumbled frantically for it on the ground.
Where is it, where is it!?
Consolo groaned, rolled over to his side and sat up on one knee with the knife still in his hand.
Mary’s hand grazed the tip of the spray-paint can.
Yes!
She placed her finger over the nozzle and ran to Consolo, and before he had a chance to react, she pressed down on the spray nozzle, swiping it across his face. Consolo was blinded instantly, a dark swath drawn across his face, dripping down onto his nose and mouth. He yelled like an animal and started swinging the knife wildly.
Mary doubled back to the other side of the stairs. She reached down and pulled the bear trap forward to the front of the steps, leapt over it and ran up the stairs. In the kitchen,
she turned and slammed the door shut behind her, then took the same chair that had knocked out her teeth as a child and jammed it up under the rusty doorknob.
Consolo screamed in anger when he heard the door close.
“You son of a bitch! Get back down here!”
Consolo found his cane on the ground and got himself to his feet, eyes still burning. He moved to ascend the stairs in pursuit.
“I’ll kill, I’ll fucking kill you, you little—”
SNAP.
His foot having landed squarely on the bear trap catch, the mechanism caused the trap to close with such force that it broke his tibia in two places, causing jagged bits of bone to stick out through the skin on both sides of his leg. Consolo dropped his cane and fell to the floor. He screamed so loudly that Mary could heard him clearly as she escaped out the backdoor.
Consolo continued screaming, but as Mary moved further from the house, his voice grew diminished, and by the time she was approaching Danielle’s car he could no longer be heard at all. Mary paused in the driveway, overwhelmed but joyous in the soundless air of serenity that filled the void outside her former home.
A flock of geese flew overhead, making their departure for a warmer climate in the face of coming winter. A squawk from one of the geese brought Mary back out of her state of meditative stillness. She lifted her head to watch the geese flying southerly in a V formation. Mary entered Danielle’s car, put her seat belt on and swept a tuft of hair out of her face with her hand.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” asked Danielle.
The End
About the Author
Jim Johanson is a writer of suspenseful stories of terror, science fiction and philosophical intrigue who espouses an appreciation for new, unrecycled ideas and the bizarre places where those ideas lead.
Also by Jim Johanson:
Kara’s Window
The Seed
Food for Thought
JimJohanson.com