The Maddening

by Andrew Neiderman

  Gagging, she pleaded incoherently. Finally he released his hold on her and picked up the chain. He lifted the bed easily with one hand and slipped the loop back under and up the bedpost. She didn’t move a muscle and she fought back the urge to utter any sound. Her sobbing was more like a series of hiccups instead. She was afraid to do anything that might further enrage him. He looked down at her for a moment and then left the room.

  The pain in her face stung like a sunburn now. She imagined that his pincher grip peeled off layers of her skin, to expose raw bone. He was so large and so powerful that to her he seemed supernatural. What contributed to this new vision of him was the realization that he had been following her during her attempted escape. True, she had never looked back, but she had never even felt his presence. Why hadn’t the floorboards and the steps creaked under him as they had under her? She was convinced the house was as much a monstrous part of them as anything else, and would never betray them.

  Where was she? Who were they? Perhaps she had fallen out of the real world. Maybe this was hell itself.

  She heard the distinct sound of another chain rattling as Gerald came back up the stairs. Stacey heard his conversation with Irene in the hallway.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m taking the children into bed with me, Gerald. They’re both terribly afraid because of what she did. You sleep in their bed tonight,” she added. Stacey didn’t hear his response. A moment later he was in her doorway. He paused, blocking out most of the light. Then he came forward, dangling the second chain in his right hand.

  “No,” she said. It was only a whisper. “No.” She started to sit up, but he loomed over her. His body seemed to swell right before her eyes.

  He wrapped her other leg with the chain and snapped the padlock shut through the links. Then he lifted the other bedpost and did the same thing. He stood up and looked down at her. Her sobbing had stopped; she was frozen numb with expectation. He brought his right hand to the small of her stomach and pressed his palm against it. She closed her eyes as his fingers crawled over her, his hand moving like a giant spider.

  When he brought his other hand to her breasts, her efforts to produce resistance changed into efforts to block reality. It was the only defense left to her. Like the brain of someone going down in an inevitably fatal plane crash, her mind turned itself off. She didn’t become unconscious so much as shifted into another gear.

  She was a little girl again, running over a lawn of fresh spring grass. Her face was warmed by the sunlight and her hair floated in the breeze. She was giggling and taking pleasure in the strength of her own limbs powering her up and down the small hills. She chased a blue jay and veered when it turned right and soared to a tree limb. She stopped to stare at a cloud because it looked like an elephant made of chalk dust pressed against blue paper.

  Then she heard her mother call and she tilted her head to tune into the music of that voice, a melody that was as akin to her as the sound of her own voice. It came to her in soft, undulating waves. “Stacey, come home. Come back, baby. Stacey.”

  “Yes,” she muttered. Had she said it aloud?

  She drifted away with her own dying voice and never heard or felt Gerald slip beside her into the bed.

  David heard Stacey’s scream coming from within the house. It shattered the darkness and brought the night down around him like so much broken glass. He was pounded by the reality. This was no dream. All of this was really happening. Pressing his eyes closed tightly, praying, promising, whatever he did to wish it away, none of it would change things. He was lying here in the darkness; his leg was broken and his wife and child were somehow trapped in the house before him.

  He turned over onto his stomach and got to his hands and knees, but quickly realized there was no way he could put weight on his broken leg. He looked about, hoping to find a stray branch that could be used as a crutch, but even though the night sky was relatively clear, there was little illumination to help distinguish shapes.

  This well which had almost become his grave was less than ten yards from the rear of the house. Except for a small area of hard dirt, most of the grounds around him appeared to be covered with recently trimmed grass.

  He turned back and saw that the barn was to the rear. His first thought was that he should go and see what he could find to use as a crutch and as a weapon. But then he thought he’d never make the barn in his condition. He had to make his way to the highway and flag down a vehicle, he had to get help.

  Stacey’s screaming stopped and a light went on in the house. He stared at it for a moment and waited. What was going on in there? Could he afford to risk the time it would take for him to reach the road? Could he chance waiting for someone to come along? What if no one came along for a while? This was a back road. There wasn’t much traffic on it during daylight when he first arrived; he remembered that even when one car did appear, the driver wouldn’t stop. He was sure he would be a still more frightening sight for anyone now. He would go mad standing around in the dark and waiting for someone to come along, all the while thinking about Stacey and Tami in that house. Hopping all the way back to the garage was out of the question. He doubted he could even make his way to one of the houses lining the road.

  He looked back at the rambling Victorian structure and thought about Stacey. While he was lying here being logical, she might be dying. He considered the possibility that she might be dead already, and that Tami was left alone to face those terrible people.

  Forget the barn; forget looking for a crutch, forget searching for a weapon, and forget hoping that someone comes along. Get to your wife and child. Get to them as fast as you can, he told himself.

  He began to crawl over the grass. The pain from his broken bone traveled up into his hip, but he refused to acknowledge the ache or the pains in other parts of his body. His attention was glued fast to the house and he forced himself to think of nothing else. When he reached the back porch steps, he used the short banister to pull himself into a standing position, balancing himself on his one good leg. He hopped up the steps awkwardly and nearly fell forward on the door. He knew how important it was for him to be as quiet as possible, so he regained his balance first and then tried the doorknob. It turned, but the door didn’t give way. It was locked.

  For a moment he stood there listening. Apparently no one within had heard him. Once again he considered his options logically. There was no point in going around to the front of the house. If they had locked the back door, they were sure to have locked the front door. He decided to work his way around the house, trying as many of the screened windows as possible. Perhaps one had been left unlocked.

  But when he leaned on the banister and moved back down the porch steps and turned to the right, he saw the Bilko basement door. He was familiar with the way they were constructed, and he knew the metal door opened onto a short cement stairway which would lead down to a basement wall door. Bracing himself against the walls of the house, he hopped over to the metal door and knelt beside it. He turned the knob and was encouraged when the door lifted easily. Holding it up and open for a moment, he listened again.

  Suddenly the light he had seen turned on after Stacey’s scream went off. He surmised that whatever was being done had been completed. The possibilities frightened him, but he told himself this was no time to dwell on such things. He slipped his body under the metal door and then let it close gently so there would be a minimum of sound.

  Inside, he found himself shrouded in total darkness, and carefully felt his way down the stone steps to keep pressure off his bad leg. Even so, he couldn’t help but occasionally bump and graze his broken bone. The pain was excruciating every time, robbing him of breath and engulfing him in nausea again. He had to pause and gulp in deep breaths to will the pain away.

  When he crawled to the bottom of the cement stairway, he groped toward the basement door until he found its handle. He held his breath. What hope was there if this didn’t work? He turned the knob and
heard the tooth scrape in retreat. The door opened. A few seconds later, he was inside the basement of the house. He closed the door behind him and waited to be sure that no one had heard him enter, then he cast his gaze around, getting accustomed to the room.

  He realized he was in a children’s playroom. There was a large dollhouse to his right and next to it a shelf lined with dolls. He saw a small couch and an easy chair directly across from him. The legs had been cut off the couch and the chair to accommodate a child’s size. In fact, everything that he could make out in the room looked miniaturized. He felt like Gulliver in Lilliput.

  He limped deeper into the room. There was a small table circled by four chairs and flanked by a phonograph set on a short and very narrow table. The floor was carpeted with very soft, thick piling, but the darkness blurred the exact color. It looked pinkish brown.

  He crawled to the doorway of the playroom and peered into the darkness of the adjoining room. From what he could see, this looked more like the typical basement: concrete floors and walls, oil burner and water heater in the right corner, and some other furniture and storage cartons.

  What interested him the most was what looked to be a very large trunk set in the center of the room. He thought it was as long and at least as wide as a casket.

  Christ, he thought, as remembered frames from a dozen horror films passed through his mind, am I in the house of a vampire?

  Twenty-four hours ago, such a thought would have brought laughter, or at least a wide smile to his face. But after all that had happened to him, including the acrid odor at the bottom of the well, and all that had obviously happened to Stacey and Tami, nothing seemed ridiculous anymore. He needed to look to make sure. Crawling toward it, he pulled himself up as best he could and opened the lid.

  It was so dark in the basement that only contours were really distinct, but he didn’t need a great deal of light to fathom the box’s purpose. The soft, cushioned interior made it clear to him that this was indeed a coffin. Fortunately it was empty. Groping further he noticed a latch on the lid to keep it locked down. He thought that was odd. Did they expect the dead would rise? Who the hell keeps a casket in their basement anyway? What is this place? Who are these people? he wondered.

  A shudder rippled through him and turned the muscles in his body into jelly. He felt he would sink to the floor. He felt as though his torso would pour through his legs and settle like a puddle around this…this thing.

  A sound of scurrying, probably mice, made him look to the left where he spotted a stairway that led up into the house. He knew he would have to go up there, but for the moment he closed the lid of the coffin quietly and retreated to the playroom. He knew he needed some kind of plan. He was in no condition to confront the big man face to face. He wouldn’t have been able to do it if he was in perfect shape. Now that he was cocooned in the playroom, he had to think of something to gain the upper hand. He decided surprise and a weapon would work most in his favor.

  Of course, the first thing he had to determine was where Stacey and Tami were in the house and how they were. The enormity of his task now sank into him. What was he thinking of when he decided to come inside? He was badly injured—practically helpless. It was understandable that he couldn’t tolerate their being trapped in here, but what would he do and how would he do it?

  He couldn’t keep crawling around on one good leg. It was too easy to stumble over the objects in the overly furnished rooms. David mulled over the unpromising situation. Suddenly the realization of this bizarre setting, the pains and weakness of his broken body, and the terrible plight of his wife and daughter rushed over him and drove him into a depression. He sagged into the chair beside the small table holding the phonograph and lowered his head to his chest.

  When he ran his fingers over the broken part of his leg, he winced at the pain. He thought about pressing the bone back into place and tying something tightly around the leg, but when he pressed in gently, the shock of pain that traveled to his heart sent him reeling with nausea. He started to retch again and fought back unconsciousness. He knew he couldn’t fight it for long; he was simply too exhausted.

  For a moment he lost his balance and leaned against the small table, tipping it enough to one side to send the phonograph crashing to the floor. He stared down at it as though it had just read him his death sentence. As quietly as he could, he reached over and fitted the case top back on the turntable before putting the machine back on the table. After that, he listened.

  Creaking floorboards overhead as he crawled to the playroom doorway signaled that he had awakened someone. A moment later he saw a light from above spill under the basement doorway.

  Forlornly, he looked about the dark room. He couldn’t remain where he was. As soon as someone turned on the basement light, he would be discovered and then all hope of helping Stacey and Tami would be lost. There was no place to hide in the small playroom. Where could Gulliver hide in Lilliput? Anyplace he went, he would stand out.

  His mind ranged over his alternatives. He could conceal himself behind the water heater in the other room, but he would be hidden from only one angle. The same was true for the oil burner. Yet he had to shelter himself to spare his wife and daughter. Suddenly the solution came to him. It was grotesque, but it was safe. He would hide in the coffin.

  It would be only for a little while, he told himself as he crawled over to it. Forget about it being a coffin. It was going to be comfortable. He would have enough air to breathe for a while and no one would suspect he was there. At least no rational person would, he thought. These people might, but what choice did he have?

  He had to avoid discovery. He would have no chance otherwise. The pain was too piercing to ignore and the effort to climb out of the well had drained him of much needed strength and energy. Who knew what he had to face in order to rescue Stacey and Tami? This was the logical thing to do, and no matter what his emotions told him, he knew logic would bring results. It always had before. He had to drive back the hysteria; he had to be a stronger man if he was going to pull off the impossible.

  He opened the lid, looked about, and listened to the noises above. The sound of footsteps was drawing closer to the basement door. Without further hesitation, he climbed into the coffin. He pulled the lid down slowly over him and adjusted his sore body as best he could. He held his breath and listened. He heard the basement door open; the basement light switch clicked too. The coffin was built so well and the lid fit so perfectly that not the slightest bit of light seeped through.

  The air-tightness frightened him when he realized how shut off he was from any fresh oxygen. He had to pray that whoever it was didn’t remain long. He had no idea how long he could last sealed inside and he couldn’t risk lifting the lid even a little.

  From the heaviness of the footsteps on the basement stairway, he knew it was the farmer. He heard him pause before he reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a long moment of silence and then the steps continued until the man reached the bottom. David heard him walk to the playroom. He heard him snap the light switch in there. Again there was a pause. David prayed he had reassembled the phonograph correctly.

  For a moment he panicked: what about the outside basement door? Had he closed it completely behind him? He waited and listened. A few moments later the light switch in the playroom was flipped again and the footsteps drew closer to the coffin. He sensed the man standing beside it; he even thought he heard the man rub the palm of his hand along the top of it. David expected him to lift the lid at any moment. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure the man could hear it.

  David raised his hands slowly in anticipation, realizing any defense of himself from this position was ludicrous, but the man didn’t do as he expected. Instead, he walked back to the stairs and paused. Then, after another long moment, he started up the stairs. David heard the basement light switch off and heard the basement door close above.

  He didn’t twitch a muscle. The man could be using subterfuge to flush David
out of hiding. He would wait, he thought, until he could stand the stifling air of the box no longer.

  He was surprised at how comfortable he was inside. The darkness was soothing; the interior was soft and plush; his tense muscles relaxed. Perhaps if he just rested for a while, some of his desperately needed stamina would return and he would be able to think again. True, he was in a coffin, but only for a little while.

  Finally he lifted the lid a little and waited, listening. Nothing stirred in the dark room, encouraging him to open the coffin completely. Certain he was alone now he sagged against the cushion and let the softness seep into his bones. Now he could breathe unfettered air and let feelings of safety wash over him soothingly.

  He felt guilty but he had to rest; he had to. He would be no good to Stacey and Tami if he had no strength at all. It was quiet above. Whatever was being done to them probably had ceased; he would get to them before morning. He swore to it. The resolution soothed and quieted his conscience.

  No longer having to deal with his resistance, sleep, the balm to his pain, flooded over him eagerly. His last conscious thought was “It’s going to be only a little while longer. Then I’ll come up with a solution.”

  The darkness that he had pierced as he roamed through the basement closed in around him and all was deadly quiet.

  Shirley made sure that she was closest to Irene when Irene made her and Tami come to bed with her. She stepped in front of Tami as they walked out of the room and left her behind, wiping her eyes and sniveling. Irene ushered them into the bedroom and told them to crawl under the covers quickly.

  Shirley moved fast, leaving barely enough room for Tami. Irene didn’t seem to notice. She came around the other side of the bed and crawled under the covers. Shirley watched her carefully. She hadn’t been in bed with her mother since she was a very little girl. Gerald always disapproved of the idea, even when she had nightmares, and even if those nightmares were about Arthur.