The Maddening

by Andrew Neiderman

  In a routine manner, he had taken down information from a man who reported that his wife and child were missing. He forwarded the information to the proper adjunct agencies and then followed up on the progress, driven first by professional curiosity, and skepticism, and now by a passion. In a way, he identified with David Oberman, and wanted to prove the guy clean. He had a hunch about the man, and that was that the man was honest and sincere. Chicky would like to prove his hunch on target.

  Chicky understood that he didn’t have to do this. It would have been easier to follow Krammer’s orders and bow out, but in his own quiet way, he was tenacious and stubborn. When something gnawed at him, he had to respond. It wasn’t in his nature to ignore a hunch and go on with his private life as though nothing unusual had happened. He knew it would only haunt him wherever he went.

  And so he was on the highway, following the route David Oberman must have taken to search for his missing wife and daughter. Despite the faulty exhaust pipe, he made good time. He liked traveling during the morning hours. Traffic was always lighter than at any other time of day, even in the midst of a summer resort season peopled heavily with vacationers.

  He traced the route on his map. He wasn’t as familiar with this district as he was with his own, but he knew enough to reach Willow Road without difficulty. He took it slowly, studying the quiet homes and heavily wooded forests, as well as the cleared fields. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for, not having seen Oberman’s car; but he had faith in his ability to spot something unusual. Maggie would laugh at him, but he had come to rely more and more on that thing he knew was the policeman’s sixth sense.

  Despite that, nothing flagged his attention the entire length of the country road. An air of serene peace hung over this rural neighborhood which he found quite attractive and a nice contrast to his own hectic resort community. He made a turn at the end of Willow and saw a garage, knowing it was the one Captain Stark referred to in his report. A young man finished pumping gas into a dilapidated car as Chicky drove up and introduced himself.

  “Christ, this is a regular policeman’s convention,” he said.

  “Well, you might very well have been the last person to have contact with this woman…and her husband,” Chicky added.

  “Husband? He’s missing too now?”

  “It’s beginning to look that way. That’s why I came around.”

  The mechanic grunted but walked back to the car he had on the lift. Chicky followed him.

  “I told them everything I know.”

  “I’m sure you did. I was just hoping that if you thought about it one more time, you might remember something that would help me locate him…and his wife.”

  “Shit,” the mechanic said. He turned away from the car. “The woman comes here. I give her Willow Road as a shortcut; her husband comes around, and I tell him the same thing.”

  “He had been down Willow, right?”

  “Yeah, and he spoke to some of the people. He even talked to Gerald Thompson, for chrissakes.”

  “So? Who’s Gerald Thompson?”

  “Creepy son of a bitch. He don’t like talking to anyone. Looks like the hulk, only he has better features. Anyway, no one saw anything. I told him she couldn’t get lost on that road. There’s no place to turn off but a couple of cowpaths.”

  “Cowpaths?”

  “You know, dirt side roads that farmers used.”

  “Thompson lives where on Willow?”

  “First house on the right if you circle back. That’s it, mister. I really didn’t have much to say. You can come back about three and talk to Verne, if you want.”

  “Verne?”

  “My brother. He remembered about that other woman and child.”

  “What other woman and child?”

  “I don’t know much about it. I wasn’t working here then. Seems there was a woman and child missing in this area a couple of years ago. He told me about it.”

  He pretended he didn’t know what the mechanic was talking about. “Did he tell the other policemen?”

  “Naw. He remembered after they left yesterday. Come back about three if you want.”

  “Another woman and child? Missing?”

  “That’s all I know, mister.” Chicky didn’t move. “Look, I got this exhaust pipe to replace and—”

  “Exhaust pipe! You heard mine when I pulled up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I might very well be back,” Chicky said. “For your professional services, as well as to talk to your brother.” The mechanic smiled and shook his head. “Thanks,” Chicky said.

  When he got back into his car he just sat there for a few moments. Finally, human memory of that other missing mother and daughter. He shook his head. Maybe Verne could give him details the police department might have overlooked. Skimming surfaces was not his style.

  He decided to return to Willow Road. He paused when he reached the farmhouse on the right, but didn’t stop as he sized the place up. He was more interested now in what the mechanic had called cowpaths. He recalled seeing one on his left near the bottom of Willow. Once again, there wasn’t anything scientific about his desire to seek it out. It was just…a hunch.

  When he reached it, he stopped his car and got out. Considering the condition of his exhaust pipe, he decided not to chance the uneven, rutted road. He knelt down and studied the tire tracks in the dirt. He was no Daniel Boone; he would never call himself a country boy. He had never gone hunting and he really had never spent much time in what people would call nature, but a person didn’t have to to be an expert tracker to see that these automobile tracks were fresh. And they weren’t left by a farm vehicle, either, he concluded.

  He looked back at his car, regretting his malfunctioning car radio, then started down the dirt road, his heartbeat racing faster as his unscientific and impossible to substantiate police sense switched on. It was as though some kind of homing device had gone off in his head. He walked on.

  Tami awoke first. Sunlight had begun to penetrate the thin curtains, and darkness was retreating from the bedroom. When she opened her eyes, it took her a few moments to focus on the strange woman beside her. Irene had fallen asleep on her back with her arms out in crucifix fashion. Both children were just under them and close to her body. In sleep Irene’s thin face looked even more narrow and bony. Her shallow, regular breathing made the skin of her cheeks quiver. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyeballs moved against the thin membrane of the lids to look like two rodents trapped beneath a sheet.

  Tami lifted her head tentatively and looked over Irene at Shirley; curled up in a fetal position, her right hand was cupped and pressed against her lips. Even so still and quiet, the big girl looked ominous. Tami didn’t want to wake her; she didn’t want to wake either of them.

  Tami sat up as carefully and quietly as she could. She looked toward the doorway. She knew which room her mother was in, and she understood that her mother was unable to leave it. The terror she felt in the presence of Irene, Shirley, and Gerald was intensified by the realization that her mother, who was another adult, was confined and trapped. Most of all, she was incapable of doing anything about it. If her mother couldn’t help herself, it was clear she couldn’t come to Tami’s aid.

  Tami gazed at the other two again and waited. The scene reminded her of all the times she awoke in her house and tried to fool her parents. Asleep in their room, they were usually oblivious to her comings and goings at the break of dawn. They didn’t want her up and in the living room watching television, but she found that if she was quiet enough about it, she could sneak in and turn on the set without their realizing it for hours. She had only to keep the volume down.

  She slipped from this bed just as stealthily as she would from her own and stood very still. Irene’s breathing became more ragged and her lips moved against each other, but her eyes didn’t open, nor did she turn in the bed. Shirley didn’t move either.

  Feeling more secure, Tami started for the bedroom doorway,
tiptoeing over the rug. When she reached the door, she paused and looked back. All was still quiet. She entered the hallway and, keeping herself close to the wall, she groped toward her mother’s room. She had her hands cupped against her mouth as though to keep herself from making any sounds. When she reached the doorway, she stopped and peered in slowly.

  Despite the light that glowed from the hallway, Tami had trouble making out her mother’s form in the bed. She hesitated to enter until she was sure the mound on the bed was her mother. She was afraid that if she went in, and her mother wasn’t there, she would be trapped in the room. To Tami the room was filled with an evil magic. It was as horrible as the Bad Box. She didn’t trust the shadows and the silence.

  Tami also understood that Irene and Gerald did not want her in this room. Still, she was unable to resist her need to be near her mother, to touch her and to hear her voice. The conflict and indecision stung her eyes with tears and she released a small sob. Even though it was the tiniest of sounds, it seemed like an explosion echoing in the room.

  Stacey lifted her head from the pillow. The moment she was outlined clearly in the darkness, Tami rushed to her. Without a sound, mother and child embraced. Stacey held Tami to her tightly, almost too tightly, and covered her face with small kisses. Tami worked her head down against her mother’s neck and held onto her firmly.

  The realization that this reunion had to be held in complete silence never left either of them. Stacey did not have to warn Tami about making too much noise. The child thoroughly sensed the danger and was even afraid her mother would speak too loudly. When she lifted her face from her mother’s body, she looked immediately toward the doorway, half expecting Irene or Gerald to be there.

  “My baby,” Stacey whispered, “my baby, oh, my baby.”

  “I wanna go home.”

  “I know, honey. I know.”

  Stacey sat up farther, watching the doorway. Tami crawled beside her in the bed and locked her arms around her mother’s waist, holding on as if for dear life. Stacey stroked her head, noting the unevenness of her chopped hair, and then brought her lips to her cheek.

  Stacey considered the options. Now that she was firmly chained to this bed, there was little she could do herself. After all that had happened, her wild attempts to escape, the attack from the man which she barely remembered except in a haze, she felt totally defeated. Any attempt at escape seemed futile. Her lightly sedated food kept her sluggish; when the effects wore off, and she managed to break through, the man always seemed there, looming over her. Even if she managed an escape again, she felt the very house would betray them.

  But her daughter clung to her, desperately seeking relief. This was the longest she and Tami had been together since first entering the house. The contact revived hope. Her maternal instincts galvanized her. She lifted Tami’s head and lowered herself to face her.

  “Tami, baby, listen, honey. Do you think you can go down the stairs by yourself very, very quietly?”

  “I don’t wanna,” she whispered.

  “You’ve got to, honey. Mommy can’t get out of this bed. You’ve got to go by yourself, but you’ve got to do it very quietly so they don’t hear you.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “I know. The front door is locked. You can’t go out the front door. Did you see another way out?”

  Tami thought for a moment, her eyes blinking rapidly. The whole period of her entrapment seemed like a prolonged nightmare, and just as it would be with any dream, she had difficulty recalling it clearly. The chronology was confused, and the layout of the house blurred in her mind. To her the basement was upstairs and the outside darkness was as close as the living room downstairs. She couldn’t even picture the front door.

  But thinking about the outside spurred her to recall the short, dark cement stairway that led to a metal door. It was frightening, but it was another way out, even though in her mind it was classified as Shirley’s secret exit to Arthur.

  She nodded slowly.

  “What? Where?” Stacey cried in hushed, tearful tones.

  “Up the stairs.”

  “Up the stairs? What stairs, Tami? Where are there stairs that go up?” Tami didn’t answer. “Think, honey. Think. It’s so important. You want to help Mommy, don’t you?” Tami nodded. “Then where?”

  “Where we played with the dolls and the clay.”

  “Downstairs?” Tami nodded. “Far downstairs? The basement?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then you’ve got to go back down there, quietly, secretly, and you’ve got to go back up those stairs and outside. Do you understand, sweetheart?”

  Tami nodded, but she didn’t like it.

  “You come, too.”

  “I can’t, honey. Look,” Stacey said. As quietly as she could, she lifted her left leg so Tami could see the chain. “There’s one on my other leg, too. I can’t get out of the bed. You’ve got to go out yourself. And when you get out, you’ve got to run to the road and go back the way we came. Do you think you can remember that?” Tami shook her head. “You’ve got to, Tami. It’s the only hope we have. Listen, listen,” she said, taking her hand tightly between hers as the girl’s face squinted in a sob. “It doesn’t matter if you forgot which way we came. Go any way you see a car or a person and make them stop, okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, yes. And then just tell them where I am and what’s wrong with me, okay? Whoever it is will get us help. Please try, honey. Will you try?”

  “I wanna go home.”

  Stacey’s whispers grew urgent. “This is the way; this is the only way we’ll be able to go home, Tami. You’ve got to be Mommy’s big girl and do it.”

  Tami thought for a moment and then wiped the tears from her cheeks. They had spilled from her eyes without her realizing it. She looked back at the doorway.

  “You’ve got to be very quiet, Tami. So very quiet. You can’t wake the bad people, okay?”

  Tami nodded.

  “It’s like a game, only it’s very, very important. Go on, Tami. Do it. Go on.” Stacey pushed her away gently. Tami stood up and rubbed her face. She looked back at her mother in the bed and nearly broke into loud sobs. She swallowed the urge, and even though it was painful to do so, she kept herself from making any sound at all. “Go on,” Stacey repeated, trying to smile through her anguish. Tami turned slowly from her mother’s bed and walked toward the door. She looked back when she reached it. “Go on,” Stacey whispered.

  Tami peered into the hallway. It was quiet and empty. She stepped out quickly, her little feet practically gliding over the wood as she crossed to the stairway. She looked back once, fear stamped on her face, and took hold of the banister to grope down the stairs, bouncing lightly on each step. The stairs barely creaked under her light weight.

  When she reached the basement door, she found it slightly ajar. It was the way Gerald had left it the night before. She pushed it open only enough for her body to squeeze through and then, without hesitation, she switched on the basement light and descended the stairway, driven by the urgency on her mother’s face and the importance of what she was about to do.

  13

  Just moments before Tami flipped the light switch in the basement, pain again stabbed David’s leg. He had fallen into a deep sleep during which he dreamed about being in the well and working his way up, only in the dream it wasn’t a well, but a long tunnel that writhed and turned as it swallowed him like a giant snake. The protruding rocks which served as rungs resembled the scales of a reptile’s skin. The walls around him pulsated, closing in and then expanding. He could hear the sound of an animal breathing.

  From time to time in the dream, the walls clung to his bad leg, squeezing it so hard he felt pain scald his body. He moaned and squirmed, and when the pain became so intense that the very walls of the well turned red, he awoke abruptly. He aborted a scream when he jack-knifed up and saw where he was.

  He lay back in the darkness, feeling the sweat rising on
his skin. He was soaked and chilled. He had no idea how long he had slept, but the rest hadn’t done him as much good as he had hoped. Beside the pain radiating up his leg in undulations, his arms and shoulders ached from the effort to pull himself out of the well.

  Now he seriously doubted that he would be able to climb out of this coffin. Just thinking about pushing his legs over the edge exhausted him. And after he did, what would he do? A plan had not come to him as miraculously as he had hoped. He wasn’t refreshed; he wasn’t clear-thinking.

  In fact, his panic began to soar. Maybe he really wouldn’t be able to lift his body out. Maybe the madman would appear before he had a chance to escape the confines of the coffin, and bolt the lid down so he would smother to death. The thought brought a heat into his face and neck. He was about to screw up his courage when the basement lights flicked on.

  Wincing at the pain, he brought the lid back down over himself as quickly and as quietly as he could. In the soft cushions, he nestled back and listened. For a moment he heard nothing; then he heard the footsteps and realized they were softer and lighter. It wasn’t the man. Perhaps it was the woman.

  There was something familiar about the sobbing. Suddenly a father’s instinctive knowledge that his child was nearby washed over him. Hoping he was right but realizing the risk, he sat up again very, very slowly and pushed the lid up. When it was high enough for him to do so, he leaned to the side and peered over the edge.

  Tami stood alone in the doorway of the other room. She had her back to him. She was dressed in a long flannel nightgown that hung a few sizes too large on her. The hem of the material lay pooled around her feet on the floor. He saw that her beautiful hair had been chopped short. He was revolted by the sight, but he made no sound until he turned further to look toward the stairway to be sure there was no one else in the basement. Then he pushed the lid open fully and sat up.