The Maddening

by Andrew Neiderman

  He couldn’t get out on his side. The car had tipped so far to the left that the door wouldn’t open. The edge hit the earth every time he tried to jam it open. He had to slide over on the front seat and exit on the passenger’s side. After he did so, he went around to the front to survey the damage. He saw there was probably no way he would be able to get out of the ditch without a tow truck.

  “Damn.” He raised his fist to drive it down on the car hood, but thought better of that. Instead, he turned around and looked toward the forest. Why did he take the road? Why did he do this? It was as if he was being drawn into a trap, but he had to satisfy himself about what he had glimpsed in the woods. He continued down the road, breaking out into a trot until he reached the edge of the forest and could look through the trees clearly.

  It was a blue vehicle all right, fairly intact except that it looked as though it had been there for years. Why in the hell did someone just abandon a fairly new car in the forest to rot? He directed his anger at the polluter and cursed his own eyesight for not being keener. Then he looked back at his car, foundering to the left like a wounded beast.

  The frustration, the sense of defeat, the fatigue, and the sorrow flooded over him. He lowered his head. All he had succeeded in doing was making matters worse. Slowly he sauntered back to the car. He leaned against it to catch his breath and looked up at the sky. The billowing clouds appeared peaceful, majestic. How could there be such misery in a world that was so beautiful?

  He climbed back into the car and made one last attempt to back out, but the vehicle barely moved. He was sure he would inflict serious damage if he continued to attempt anything. There was no choice but to walk back to the garage.

  He started up the dirt road, hoping that a car would approach when he reached Willow. None did for quite a while, and then a woman came along in a station wagon. He flagged her down and she looked right at him, but she did not slow down. In fact, she sped up. He shouted, pleading, but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t want to. He was about to curse her when he realized how ironic it was to ridicule her. He had come out this way on a hunch that Stacey might have picked up a bad hitchhiker. Maybe this woman’s husband had warned her dozens of times never to pick up a stranger. Really, how could he blame her?

  The blame should be placed on a society that clamored with so many threatening elements. It was now a world in which you were safer if you distrusted everyone and lived a self-centered existence. It was dangerous to be good, to be compassionate, to be charitable.

  This realization fueled his anger. He was determined to throw himself in front of the next vehicle that came along and force the driver to help him. But none did, in either direction. It was as if the whole world were conspiring against him.

  Finally he reached the boundaries of the old farm. He saw the ancient stone walls of the barns and some evidence of wire fencing. Even though it looked as though the owner had retreated within smaller perimeters, David realized that the farmer had to have a working tractor that could tow his car out of the ditch. In any case the farmhouse was close enough that the man would be familiar enough with the dirt road he had taken to be helpful.

  He decided to stop to ask for his help. Of course, he would offer him some money. From the way things looked around this place, the guy would probably welcome some unexpected income. He felt sure the man would be cooperative. Encouraged by the possibility, he hurried along until he arrived at the driveway and then slowly began to walk up to the house which he now recognized.

  It was Gerald Thompson’s place.

  He would have gone much faster, but he couldn’t help experiencing that sense of foreboding again. It was just before he knocked on the door that he had the definite feeling Stacey and Tami were not too far away.

  Without knowing why, just after he brought his fist to the door, he regretted announcing his arrival. But it was too late to do anything now.

  5

  When Gerald stepped out of the chicken coop, he heard Stacey’s screams. The sounds escaped through the high narrow window set into the rear of his and Irene’s bedroom. He thought the woman was louder and shriller than ever, so he ran to the back door and charged into the house. Irene was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. He realized the radio was so loud she couldn’t have heard the screams. She looked up from her pie crust curiously, but he didn’t stop to explain. Instead, he continued on, taking the stairs two steps at a time.

  Stacey stopped the moment Gerald appeared in the doorway. He looked explosive. His upper body rose and fell with every gasp of breath and his face was colored red from the effort. It had the effect of widening his nostrils and eyes, making him look gargantuan. She felt as though she was looking through a magnifying glass.

  Indeed everything looked distorted to her now. She had the distinct impression she was dwindling, sinking deeper and deeper into the bed. Soon she would disappear completely. She embraced herself tightly, hoping to hold herself together. Actually she was still screaming, but the sounds no longer left her body. Instead they echoed back into her, down the long corridors of her mind, reverberating deeper and deeper into her subconscious. She trembled from the vibrations.

  Her mouth opened and closed. She tried to swallow and gagged on the small guttural noises that escaped. She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t prevent her head from moving side to side. She was going into shock and the shock was taking the form of a fit. Her head movements increased in intensity and speed. Finally, a sound began to emerge. It was a long, deep vowel sound, an “a” that rose in pitch.

  Gerald was more amazed than angered by the scene enacted before him. He stepped into the room to study the woman more closely. She looked like some mad animal in the throes of death. He expected that at any moment all movement and sound would end and she would keel over to the side, a wide-eyed corpse.

  An image flashed into his mind, a vision of Marlene doing exactly the same thing after they’d pulled her girl from the Bad Box where Shirley had put her for punishment and not told anyone. The little girl had suffocated overnight. Marlene had gone mad when she’d stumbled on Gerald carrying the girl out, forcing Gerald to do something to quell her hysteria…but this woman would be okay.

  As though to confirm his theory, Stacey stopped making the sound, closed her eyes, went into a quick shudder, and then swooned, falling backward on the bed. He walked to the bed and looked down at her. She was staring up at the ceiling, but he knew she was in shock.

  She was spared Marlene’s hysteria, or the coma Irene had moved in and out of after their son Arthur’s death, even though Death itself had been his only real playmate since the day the boy was born. He was born to die. What a cruel joke, Gerald thought. It was a form of torture really. Death toyed with them. It moved in and out of this house freely, teasing, tormenting, hovering in the shadows and smiling gleefully at them.

  Gerald got so he could feel Death standing right behind him those years that ended mercifully several months before he’d had to kidnap the previous mother-daughter pair to cheer up Irene with. But before then, sometimes at night, after Irene had gone up to be with Arthur, he would go outside to whisper in the shadows.

  “I know you’re here,” he’d say. “I know you’ve made this your home and that you embrace my son freely. But you don’t frighten me. You hear, you don’t frighten me.”

  He would wait for a reply. The wind would thread itself through the branches of the trees and clouds would block out the stars. In the distance a stray dog would howl about its loneliness and the bats would come out from under the eaves of the old barn and flicker, sometimes coming so close he could feel the breeze fanned by their webbed wings.

  Death said nothing, but he felt its presence. He would turn and look up at the lighted window of Arthur’s bedroom where Irene held their child in her arms and rocked back and forth hopefully. But the boy already had the face of an old man. His body was drying up right before their eyes. He was deflating like a balloon, the life force escaping from him.
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br />   “Why don’t you take him? Take him tonight,” he said. “Torment us no longer. Take him!” he screamed. His voice pierced the darkness and then came to rest somewhere in the shadows. He made no response, but he felt Death smiling. It was no use. His father and Death had become allies, and his father was right—he couldn’t let it go on. He had to go upstairs and put out the light in Arthur’s room forever.

  He waited for Irene to go to sleep and then he went into Arthur’s room. His father’s lips were so close to his ears as he walked through the hall. He could feel the breath as he whispered, “End it. End the torment. End it.”

  Arthur was tossing about in his crib. Even in his sleep, he moaned. It disgusted him that this sickly, fragile thing was his son, the fruit of his sperm.

  “Plow it over,” his father whispered from the dark beyond, “plow it over like a bad crop.”

  He reached down and took the small pillow out from under Arthur’s head and then, after only a moment’s hesitation, he brought it down over his face. The resistance was so slight it was as if he had caught a baby robin in his hands and closed his fist around it. Life trickled out and the twisted creature he had called his son seemed to evaporate.

  These memories gave him a chill even as he looked down at the crazed woman. She had a face somewhat like Irene’s used to be: soft, small features, features that were almost childlike. Her skin looked so smooth; he had to reach down and run his callused fingers over her cheeks and down to her jawbone. She didn’t stir; she didn’t blink. She couldn’t feel him touching her.

  All of a sudden that realization excited him. It had been so long since he and Irene made love the way they used to before Arthur died almost two and a half years ago. Now, whenever he attempted to touch her affectionately, she whimpered. Even when she submitted to his advances, she behaved more like it was painful than pleasurable. The passion was gone. He was making love to a memory. He had to close his eyes and imagine her the way she was.

  He let his fingers slide down over the woman’s neck to the collar of her dress. There he hesitated for a moment and looked toward the open doorway. Irene was still downstairs in the kitchen and the kids were in the basement.

  He unbuttoned the top button and then the next and the next until the cleavage created by the firmness of her breasts and the tightness of her bra was clearly visible. He took a deep breath of appreciation and brought his fingers to where the rise of her bosom began. There his fingers seemed to take their own path. He looked down at their movement as though they were separate from the rest of him.

  They pushed the material of the bra upward, pressing it away from her soft and appealing flesh until the nipple came into view. His fingers closed around her breast and he closed his eyes and brought his head back. The excitement traveled up through his fingers and arm to spread through the rest of him. He succumbed to the euphoria as his fingers explored her.

  All the while Stacey didn’t blink, didn’t shudder, didn’t moan. When he opened his eyes again, her silence and total helplessness quickened his heartbeat. He felt himself losing control and he began to kneel to bring his lips to her exposed breast.

  It was then that he heard the loud knocking at the front door. The sound was amplified through the walls of the house. Because all of his senses had been heightened, to him it seemed as if there was a minor earthquake. He pulled his hand away from Stacey quickly and stood up, listening. The knocking at the door continued.

  “Gerald?” Irene called up to him. “Gerald. Someone’s at the door. Gerald?”

  “All right. Don’t go near it,” he shouted. He looked down at Stacey again, covered her up, and then rushed out of the room. He ran down the stairs, but instead of going directly to the door, he went to the sitting room and pulled the curtain back from the window to peer out at the doorstep.

  He couldn’t control an involuntary start when he saw who stood there.

  “Who is it?” Irene said as she came to the sitting room door. She held a bowl in her arm and pressed it against her body as she stirred the batter within.

  “Shh. Go back to the kitchen. Go back.”

  “Who is it, Gerald?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “It’s the man, coming for Arthur again.”

  Irene stopped stirring and looked at the door. There was another series of knocks.

  “I said go back to the kitchen. I’ll take care of it,” he said. She turned around and retreated slowly. After she was gone, he went to the door.

  David looked behind him after he knocked the first and second times. There was an eerie silence about this place that made him uneasy. The initial regret he had felt after he had begun to knock on the door intensified until he became very anxious. He considered it an irrational fear and attributed all of it to the difficulties and frustrations he was experiencing. Nevertheless, the absence of people and noise annoyed him. It made him feel terribly alone. No one but him cared that his wife and daughter were missing.

  He practically jumped back when the front door was finally opened because it flew open so abruptly. For a long moment, both he and the big man within wrestled one another’s gaze in an unfriendly silence. The obvious lack of any basic courtesy on the farmer’s part left David speechless. He sensed that he was an unwanted intruder, someone who had disturbed the peace.

  “What is it?” Gerald asked. He stepped forward, making David retreat a few steps on the porch so he could close the door behind him.

  “I…ran into a little trouble down the road. Maybe you remember me. I was here a little while ago asking about—”

  “Yeah, I remember you. What trouble?”

  “My car…I took a side road, a path actually, and I’m hung up.” Gerald continued to stare at him. The intensity of his smoldering eyes, embedded in such an expressionless face, was unnerving. David couldn’t help feeling threatened, even though he had no idea why that should be. “In other words, I’m stuck,” he added. Maybe the man’s plain stupid, he thought.

  “There’s a garage not far.” Gerald said after a pause. His huge, muscled frame towered over David menacingly.

  “I know, but I was hoping that maybe…you have a tractor. I’d be glad to pay you.” Again, the farmer simply stared. “It wouldn’t take that long. It’s the road down on this side, about a half a mile.”

  “I know the road.”

  “Well, I was…can you help me?”

  Gerald looked back at the front door. In his mind’s eye, he could see Irene. She had gone back to the kitchen, but he knew she wouldn’t continue her work. She was probably sitting at the table, trembling with fear, reliving the horror. They had wanted Arthur’s body. There was the need for the death certificate and an autopsy before the county allowed a burial. Who buried their family members on their own land in this day and age? Wasn’t that what the government man said? He was sorry he had called Doctor Stanley in when Arthur died, but Irene wouldn’t accept his death, and he had hoped the doctor would convince her. Instead, he ended up bringing them all that trouble. The autopsy revealed nothing unnatural. They had gone on with a funeral—without Irene. And when everyone had forgotten, he had reburied Arthur.

  Now Arthur lay out back in an unmarked grave and only he knew where. Irene didn’t even know. She didn’t want to know. From time to time, her mind played tricks on her and she would believe Arthur was still alive, lying up in his room, waiting for her attention. Shirley would carry on the illusion, saying she was going to play with Arthur. It was terrible for him when they did that. The only time they let Arthur sink into oblivion was when Shirley had a playmate. He knew what she was thinking then. Arthur would have made a wonderful playmate for both girls.

  “All right,” he said, turning back to the man, “we’ll go around back and get my tractor and the chains.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate this. I really screwed things up on top of everything else,” he said, talking rapidly out of both nervousness and gratitude. He hoped the man would soften and sympathize w
ith his plight, but he just stalked past him and down the front steps. David hurried behind. “I’m David, David Oberman,” he said. The man didn’t hesitate. He continued to walk toward the rear of the house.

  Suddenly, just before they reached the basement window, David heard the sound of a child’s laugh. The big man heard it, too, and turned around. The way he looked toward the basement window and then at David piqued David’s interest.

  “You have children?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get moving if you want my help. I have my own chores to do.”

  “Right. Sorry.” David gazed down at the basement window as they walked on. He heard the laugh again, but he didn’t stop. When they rounded the rear of the building, he spotted the tractor parked to the left of the barn.

  “Wait here,” the farmer said as he went into the barn, making sure to close the door behind him. David turned around slowly; he had the strange sensation he wasn’t alone. Sure enough, when he looked at the rear of the house, he saw a woman’s face peering out at him from between the parted curtains of a small window. He didn’t see much of her, but what he saw sent a chill through him; she looked like a rodent watching fearfully, her eyes small, her face drawn, the curtains pressed against her cheeks. As soon as she realized he had spotted her, she pulled back and let the curtains close over the window.

  He heard the sound of chains being lifted off a wall in the barn and turned back in anticipation of the farmer’s appearance. He opened the barn door slightly, almost as though he wanted to sneak out of it.

  “All right,” he said. He started for the tractor and David began to follow, but not before turning back to scan the house for the woman’s face again. It was then that his gaze shifted to the floor of the back porch, next to the back door as if drawn magnetically. He squinted against the sunlight and took a few steps toward the house. It looked like…

  He continued toward the house, walking faster as the object became clearer and more distinct. When he was about ten feet from the steps of the porch, he broke into a run.