by Jack Douglas
She bit at her nails as he hit send. Silently she read their reply.
oh, i’m sorry, i forgot to mention that our phone is on the fritz and our internet has been acting up. but our landlord amaro promised that everything will be up and working sometime next week. so we’ll talk then, i promise. all right, really gotta run. love you, mom. hugs and kisses to dad. bye bye.
“This is bullshit, Craig. Let’s try something else—try Facebook. Status update to all our friends at once!”
He nodded and bent once more to the keyboard, but at that moment the instant message box closed and the internet connection went dead.
“Goodbye!”
They stared at each other in complete silence. Her breathing slowed. Her tongue felt thick and heavy. Her head was swimming and she had to steady herself again. She grabbed hold of the wobbly table.
“It’s him,” Craig said finally, as though he had read her mind. “He’s hacked into my AOL account.”
Amy shook her head, spraying her arms with sweat. “Oh, bullshit,” she said. “Bullshit. There is something more going on here, you can’t deny it now.”
He frowned at her. His face was bone-pale, with streaks of crimson advancing across his cheeks and beneath his chin. He scratched at his beard again. “I don’t really understand what you’re saying, baby.”
She stared at him. “Yes, you do. You know exactly what I’m saying, Craig. And you know that it’s true.”
Something was at work here, not someone. At least not a living someone, she was sure of it. Sure as she was that she had seen herself naked and burned and bloodied out in the hall. And of that she was now fucking damn sure.
Craig wiped some sweat from his brow then moved toward her. He ran his hand up her sweat-drenched arm.
“Sweetie, I’m worried about you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you might be losing touch with reality.”
She pulled away. “Reality? Craig, would you look at us? We are trapped in an apartment with no food and no water and with no way to communicate with anyone outside. And I saw what I saw in the hall. This is not just some crazy bastard with a chip on his shoulder trying to bully the new tenants or whatever. This is some...Some malevolent force, some...”
“Stop it, just stop it,” he said, pressing his hands against his ears like a child. “I am not even going to listen to this outrageous shit. There is a rational explanation for everything that has happened here.” He pointed toward the bedroom door. “What’s irrational is that prick next door.”
“Craig...”
“No,” he shouted. “Now calm down, please. We’ll get out of this. I got that email off to my mother. She knows exactly where we are. We just have to sit tight for a while.”
“We don’t have a while, Craig. We have two, three days, tops. And somehow your computer was changing the words we typed…”
He nodded his head solemnly and turned to look out the window. Amy followed his gaze into the alley and saw the dog, lifting its hind leg to urinate on the wall of the opposite building. When it finished, it sat and scratched itself. Then the dog let out a pained howl.
It didn’t strike Amy at first. Didn’t resonate at all until a full thirty seconds later when Craig said quietly, “How is it that we can hear him?”
Her thoughts were still muddled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, how is it that we can hear the dog but people in the alley can’t hear us?” He spoke calmly, watching the dog loiter on the cobblestones. Then suddenly, he slapped at the window, pounded at the pane with the heel of his fist. He whistled.
And the dog looked up toward their window. Looked right at them. “Son of a bitch,” Craig murmured. “The dog can hear us, too.”
It took Amy’s food-deprived mind a moment to process what he meant. Then her eyes welled up. The dog had confirmed what she knew to be true. That they were dealing with something much more insidious than an unhinged neighbor.
She looked at Craig then again down toward the dog, who continued staring up at their window, its ragged ears perked up, its sickly tongue lolling out of its mouth.
Then the telephone rang in the bedroom.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The sound startled him. So foreign, piercing, and it seemed to be coming from inside his head. Back in Manhattan he and Amy had long done away with their landlines. Each of them had a cell, but even that Craig barely used once he stopped practicing law. The risk of radiation, sure. But on top of that he’d had no desire to speak to anyone except for Amy. A ringing phone had felt as intrusive as any late night knock on the door. An unwelcome presence. An impediment to Craig’s serenity, a hindrance to his sanity.
Now the phone in the bedroom was screaming, making the same vicious sound that had startled him out of sleep two days ago when the movers arrived--when they had lied about not having cell service.
He rounded the corner and took a stride toward the bedroom door. It swung closed, slammed shut with a violent report. The sound resonated in his chest and stopped him cold. Then he dashed forward and reached for the knob.
First he heard the sizzle, then he felt his palm and fingers burn. Smelled the seared flesh. He screamed and tore his hand away, but the damage was done. It felt as though his hand were held down to a hot stove.
Amy came up behind him. “What happened?”
He held out his right hand, palm up, the skin a deep pink; raw and so painful he thought he would pass out.
Behind the door the phone continued to ring.
Pushing away the hurt, Craig ripped off his tee shirt and bunched it up, then went for the knob again, this time with the fabric protecting his flesh.
Although he had feared the door was locked, it opened with ease. He rushed inside, pushing against a thick, fierce blast of heat. He shielded his eyes, searched for the smoke, for the flames, but there was nothing but heat. So he tossed the shirt to the floor, went to the yellow plastic phone and lifted the receiver. “Hello,” he shouted. “Hello.” “It’s me.”
The voice was his own mother’s and it had never sounded so sweet.
He was panting. “Ma,” he said, “you’ve gotta help us. We’re trapped in our flat in Lisbon. Somebody’s trying to kill us. You’ve gotta call the Portuguese police, right now, please.”
There was a pause, a moment while Craig’s bare chest swelled with relief.
Then: “Help you? I’ve been helping you for thirty-two years, dear. And what have you ever done for me? Nothing, that’s what. Never even a thank you. You just packed your bags and moved away. I told you not to leave.”
His stomach tightened. He worried he would lose the connection before he got through to her, before she understood.
“Ma,” he shouted. “This is very serious. I’m not talking about financial help. We’re physically trapped in here. We’ve got no food, no water.
We’re gonna die here unless you can get us some help right away.”
He glanced in Amy’s direction. She looked on, chewing her nails.
“Oh, it’s serious, all right. No one’s son treats their mother the way you treat me. And after all I’ve done for you. It’s a disgrace. A very serious disgrace. If you’ve got no food and water it’s because of the way you live your life. I’ve been telling you for more than twenty years, nothing is free. There are no handouts in this world. If you want to live, if you want to eat, then you’ve got to work.”
“Ma,” he screamed. “You’re mot listening. Please shut up and listen to me!”
“How dare you,” she cut in. “You don’t speak to your mother like that! It’s a mortal sin. Learn some goddamn respect. Another nasty word from you and I’m hanging the fuck up and you’ll never hear from me again.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to calm himself. “Please, please, just listen to me.”
“Why? When have you ever listened to me? I told you not to go to law school, to instead get a job and make some money, pay off all those goddamn student loans, especially the ones I h
ad to co-sign for. Then when you graduated, I told you to go to work for some firm, to get a steady paycheck. But did you do that? No. You opened your own stupid law practice and what did it get you? Nothing. Not a fucking goddamn thing. Look where you are now. Trying to be a writer, something most people would consider a damned hobby.”
His head was spinning. He was confused, unable to think. “I know, I know,” he pleaded. “You were right. You were right all along. But please just listen to me now.”
He drew a breath and she broke in again.
“Did you listen to me when I told you not to go to Hawaii with that silly whore? Did you listen when I told you to stay the hell away from Europe, to move out of that rancid New York City and come back to New Jersey to go to work?”
He couldn’t believe this was happening, not here, not now. “No,” he cried, tears flowing, “I didn’t. I’m so sorry, so sorry, I’m sorry, Ma.. Please just forgive me and help us get out.”
“Don’t you shout at me!”
“I’m not shouting at you. I’m just trying to explain...”
“Explain what? I’m tired of cleaning up after your mistakes,” she barked. “Whatever you got yourself into, you can get yourself out of. You and that whore. You know what this is really about? You’re a loser, Craig, that’s what you are. You got yourself trapped in your own apartment? That’s like something a loser would do! You deserve to rot in there with your disgusting whore. Serves you right for not listening to your own mother.”
“Please,” he begged. His hands were trembling. “Just let me speak...” Despite his crying her voice remained cold. “I’ve let you do enough. I’ve let you walk all over me, walk out on me. I’m through letting you get your way. Either come home now or you can die there for all I care.”
Craig looked up at Amy, whose eyes were wide with expectation, and shook his head. “She says she won’t help.”
Amy glared at him. “Is she really on the line, Craig?”
His face flushed red. “You still think I would make this up? That I somehow orchestrated all this?” He waved an arm toward the soiled bed and the palpable wall of stench emanating from the bathroom.
“Let me talk to her.” Amy held her hand out for the phone.
Then his mother’s voice came through the receiver loud enough for both of them to hear. “Tell her I don’t talk to whores. That’s not what they’re for. But you know that, don’t you, son? Maybe that can be your next book title! What Whores Are For, by Craig Devlin. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
He heard a click then the line went dead. He held the receiver out in front of him with his bubbling, blistering hand, staring in disbelief so all-encompassing it took away the pain.
“What’s going on?” Amy said with a befuddled look on her face. “Is she at least calling the Lisbon police?”
He grimaced. “You were right.” He steadied his arm and set the phone down, glanced around the room, trying to catch his breath. “There is something happening here.”
He felt faint. His stomach growled, sweat dripped into his eyes. He needed to think but his mind wouldn’t cooperate. Everything was foggy, like that night not long ago in the mist. With the gypsy whores—you know what they’re for! He felt drunk, drugged. Uneasy on his feet. Amy was saying something but he couldn’t make it out, could barely discern her words over the rapid beating of the pulse in his ear.
(It’s a tumor.)
(Or an aneurism.)
He stumbled, grabbed hold of the bedpost to keep himself on his feet.
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
Then came the pounding from the front door.
Amy reacted first. She staggered toward the bedroom door and he followed her into the living room, where the blows sounded as though they were being delivered by a nail gun or maybe a ball pein hammer.
Amy limped toward the door. She turned to him. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t look through that peephole again.”
He nodded slowly and moved past her, breathing heavily. The knocking reverberated in his stomach.
As suddenly as it started, it stopped; the pounding replaced by a dark, disquieting silence.
Gradually he moved his face toward the door. Closed his left eye and opened his right wide. He placed it against the hole.
It was his body he saw, arms pinned to its side, blood gushing from the neck, thrashing backward and forward up against the far wall as if flung by some invisible force, its mouth frozen in a silent, hideous scream.
His real body began convulsing. Still he forced himself to watch, to maintain his gaze a few moments longer while his real body slammed itself into the door with random muscle spasms.
Amy grabbed hold of his arm. “Look,” she shouted, pointing down at the floor.
Beneath the door their yellow page reappeared. His vision was blurred but Craig recognized his own writing. He lowered himself on his haunches and lifted the paper.
The first thing that struck him was the smell. The page reeked of shit. When he turned it over in his hands, he saw why. On the back there were two words scribbled in excrement. He dropped the page and gagged.
The yellow paper floated to the floor, face up, Portuguese words staring up at them. He bolted to his feet, tried to keep himself from being sick.
Amy had her hands over her mouth. Tears streamed down her face and over her fingers. She seemed to dry-heave, then gathered herself. She knelt to pick up the page.
“Don’t,” Craig warned. “Don’t touch it.”
She froze and looked up at him, her eyes pleading for help. “We have to look these words up in the phrase book. We have to see what they mean.”
Craig shook his head. He put the inside of his elbow over his nose and mouth and tried to breathe. “Don’t bother,” he said into his arm. “I already know what they mean.”
Amy rose up, took a step back from the page as though it were a widening hole in the floor. Then she hunched over and with both hands she clutched her wobbling knees, whimpering in pain. She took two deep breaths, then stared up at him again.
“Vivimos aqui,” he said, glaring down at the page. “It means, ‘We live here.’”
Chapter Twenty-Five
She sat alone on the stained and tattered bare mattress, her knees curled up against her chest, rocking slowly back and forth, humming along trancelike with the fado. She was all cried out, the flesh around her eyes as crimson as her dry cracked lips. Scarlet spider webs draped across the whites surrounding her pupils. She looked as she felt, like death.
She glanced again in the clouded mirror atop the dresser. Her auburn hair had somehow darkened. Her small body had gotten smaller, and her flesh was as white as printer paper. Her breathing had become more of a wheezing, her sweating more profuse. The temperature in the flat continued rising for seemingly no reason at all. Outside, the Lisbon sky remained a solid gray. Earlier it had even rained.
Her head throbbed from thirst and hunger, her neck was stiff with stress. Her thoughts, when they steadied long enough to coalesce on anything other than her profound misery, lingered on the filthy ice lining the freezer. She stared hard at the visage in the mirror, no longer recognizing her eyes, and realized it was time.
It took all of her strength to move herself off of the bed. She used the dresser and walls as crutches as she staggered to and through the bedroom door, into the living room still dressed in her nightclothes, a faded red tank top and pale yellow shorts.
Craig was stationed in front of the laptop, his fingers still pounding at the keys.
How can he write? she thought. I can barely keep my goddamn head up.
His eyes turned to her then turned quickly back to the screen. She said nothing as she shuffled past him, just continued to whimper and wheeze.
The kitchen linoleum tiles were cool, almost soothing against her bare feet. She closed her eyes and savored the sensation as she teetered toward the fridge.
Then she heard a crunch, felt something wet yet solid bene
ath her left foot. She lifted her foot and hopped clear of the spot. Nothing was there. She set her foot down tentatively, heard the crunch again, felt something writhe and squish.
She lifted her foot again to see. Stuck to her sole was a large brown roach, the top of its carapace cracked, its six legs flailing frantically, its antennae twirling in circles. Panicking, she screamed and kicked at the air. The creature wouldn’t dislodge, just stuck there near her toes, doing its danse macabre.
Frantically she searched the counter. Finally she spotted a dirty dishrag behind the sink. She balanced herself on one leg, reached for the rag and nearly toppled. Then she snatched the rag and snapped it at the sole of her foot, knocking the insect away.
“What happened?”
Craig stood in the kitchen’s entranceway, his head at an odd angle, his hands on his hips.
“A fucking roach,” she cried. “I stepped on it and it stuck to the bottom of my foot.”
He looked down at the insect, a strange, doleful look on his face. The roach was still on its back, still thrashing its legs about, its two large antennae probing the air, trying to turn itself over.
“You should put some shoes on,” Craig said.
She stared at him silently, irritated by his calm. She motioned to the icebox. “I’ve got to try it,” she said. “Do you want some?”
He shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the roach. “I’m going to get back to work. Thirty-eight thousand words. I’m almost halfway done with the book.” He started back into the living room, then stopped and turned his head. “Have you seen my memory stick? I want to back my files up.”
She glared at him. Are you fucking kidding me? she thought. “No, I haven’t.”
He disappeared back into the living room.
She rolled her eyes and opened the freezer, took a good long look inside. The ice was melting. It now looked like a great big slushie. Used kitty litter-flavored, yum. She wouldn’t even need the icepick.