The Agony House

by Cherie Priest

  Denise followed out the door more slowly. The perfume smell grew stronger, and she heard a soft, melodious hum. She looked down at the carpet to see if there were any footprints this time—but Terry was in the way, blocking her view. She couldn’t see the carpet runner or the attic door.

  She froze in the entrance to her bedroom and let him keep walking, holding up the recorder and staring off into space.

  “Do you hear anything?” he asked Denise, not the spirit world. “I hear someone singing, but not quite.”

  Denise whispered, “It’s someone humming. I heard it once before, but it doesn’t sound the same. This sounds like … like a man, I think. I don’t like this. It feels like a trick.”

  “It’s going downstairs!” Without a second thought, he adjusted course to follow the unearthly music that wasn’t quite music, because they couldn’t quite hear it. They could only sense that it was there, somewhere at the edge of their hearing.

  “Terry, don’t. Be careful.”

  “Don’t be careful. Great advice. I’ll take it.” He descended the stairs in quick staccato footsteps, and Denise wasn’t sure if he was joking or if he’d actually misheard her.

  She went down after him. She had to. It was her house and these were her ghosts. These were her stairs, and that was her room full of ladders and extension cords at the bottom; those were her boxes of fasteners and bins of tools; that was her stair rail’s graceful swirl at the bottom, stuck through with rusty nails, just waiting for someone to grab on and bleed.

  The nails on the porch, scattered like jacks.

  Nails in the rail, pounded through so the points stuck out, and stuck up.

  “Terry! Nails!”

  He wasn’t paying a lick of attention. He was too wrapped up in the chase, following his nose like a cartoon bird on a cereal box.

  She tumbled down the stairs after him, trying to head him off. Her feet tripped over one another, but she stayed upright and she pushed past him as he reached down for support. The nails were plenty big enough and dangerous enough that Denise and Terry should’ve noticed them on the way upstairs, shouldn’t they? She should’ve seen them before. Someone should’ve pointed them out, and removed them. Mike would’ve done it. Sally would’ve done it. Denise would’ve done it, if she’d seen them.

  No, those nails had never been there before. Someone had put them there, quietly and deliberately. Unnaturally.

  “Denise, I’m losing the trail …”

  She swore at him, and bodychecked him out of the way before he could low-five the mystery pincushion. He spun around with confusion, smacking face-first against the wall and ricocheting back at Denise in the narrow, sharply angled space. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t fun. But Terry didn’t get hurt, so … mission accomplished.

  Denise put up one hand to catch him. She put back one hand to catch herself.

  She felt the nail before she saw it, and before she felt it go clean through the web between her thumb and first finger. The violence was finished before she could announce it with a shriek, and a fling of her wrist that sent a thin spurt of blood across Terry’s face, up the wall, and across the rickety steps themselves.

  Staggering backward, down, off the steps and into the living area where the parlor had holes in the floors and there wasn’t any air-conditioning to speak of, Denise clutched her hand to her chest and squeezed at the dirty, bleeding puncture.

  Terry leaped to her aid, or at least he leaped to her personal space. “What happened? What are you doing? Why did you push me?”

  She held up her hand and let it bleed in front of him, answering enough questions that he turned white. “Oh. My. God.” He wiped a smudge of blood off his forehead, looked at the smear on the back of his wrist, and went even paler.

  Her eyes scanned the scenery and spied the napkins on the dining room table. She darted over there and seized a fistful, pinching them against the wound. She breathed in and out through her mouth, making whooshing noises all the way—breathing like she was having a baby, because that was supposed to make pain easier to take. “I have to stop the bleeding. I have to keep it from getting infected. I need a first aid kit.”

  “Do you have one?”

  “Under the kitchen sink.” She flapped her other hand to show him the general direction she meant, and he went to retrieve it. A dribble of blood oozed down her wrist and trickled down her forearm.

  He produced the kit quickly and cracked open the white plastic case.

  Denise said, “I need some antibacterial ointment, and some alcohol.” She winced as she said the word, knowing how bad it was likely to hurt. “And a couple of Band-Aids.”

  “I don’t know if a couple of Band-Aids are going to cut it.”

  She left him for the kitchen sink. She put the bloody fast-food napkins beside it, ran the water until it was a little cool, and forced herself to wash her unwanted piercing with some soap. It wasn’t really bleeding that bad, all things considered. It was only a little stab, and that was a good thing too. The nail had gone straight through, palm to back, and it didn’t hit anything bony.

  “It’s only a flesh wound,” she decided.

  “We should call your parents.”

  She smacked the lever to turn off the water, retrieved the least bloody and most uncrumpled napkins, and applied pressure to the injury. “Absolutely not.”

  “But you’re bleeding.”

  “Not very bad.”

  “You screamed.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It surprised me. It hurts, but that’s okay,” she assured him, and herself too. “A lot of things hurt. It’s not the end of the world. They’ve got enough problems without me falling onto sharp things.”

  “No, but it’s a rusty nail,” he argued. “When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

  She honestly couldn’t remember. She was too rattled. She knew she’d gotten one at some point. It might’ve been a couple of years ago, or it might’ve been a lot longer. “It had to be … somewhat recently? Don’t you have to have your shots up to date, before you can go to school?”

  “You should get another one, just to be safe. Call your mom, and ask her.” He held up the antibiotic ointment and a small bottle of peroxide, which would work as well as alcohol in a pinch. “Please?”

  Denise didn’t respond other than to nod at the kitchen sink, where he put the supplies. She wadded up all but a couple of napkins, thrust them inside one of the empty takeout bags to hide their bloody nature, and stuffed them deep into the trash can beside the fridge. She wrestled one-handed with the peroxide until Terry took it away from her and pushed the childproof cap loose. He offered to do the honors, so she let him—cleaning the wound and treating it and wrapping it up with the biggest Band-Aid that was left in the mostly empty box.

  “Look, I won’t tell your parents,” he said finally. “But people get hurt less every day, and it turns into a big deal because they didn’t take care of themselves,” he insisted. “Don’t be that guy.”

  “I’ve never been that guy.”

  “Yeah, well. Don’t start now.”

  Outside, they heard a car’s engine come low and slow up to the house. Wheels turned and ground on gravel. “Hurry up!” Denise urged, using her free right hand to scoop up the bits of leftover bandage packaging, the ointment, and the first aid kit itself.

  While Terry performed the last of his doctoring, she used one hand to cram everything back inside the plastic case and toss the garbage into the trash. When he was finished, she stashed everything where it belonged, running back and forth between the dining room table and the kitchen sink, and the stairway rail—where she used the last of the napkins to swab down the visible blood and wipe down the nails.

  But whoever had pulled up to the house was only turning around. The car was large and green, and it didn’t stay—it only backed up and headed the other direction.

  “Oh thank God,” she breathed, watching it leave through the parlor window. “There’s still time.”


  Terry was washing his hands at the sink. Over his shoulder he called out, “Time for what?”

  Denise looked around for the tool bins, and selected a sturdy hammer with an oversized head. She quietly thanked God, or heaven, or friendly ghosts, that she’d only hurt her left hand, and the right was still strong enough to pry nails out of the stair rail before they could hurt anyone else. Or before anyone else could see them.

  “Like I said, I’m going to fix this mess that Joe made.” She tested the hammer’s weight in her hand.

  “You think it’s really him?”

  “Yeah, I do. Because of all the nails. There were nails rolling around when the window shut on my mom, and nails on the porch when Mike fell through, and now there are nails on the stair rail.” She didn’t smell flowers anymore, and there wasn’t any more blood on the staircase. Of course, there weren’t any more napkins, either, and Mike would probably notice. She’d say she spilled something, and used them to clean it up. It was practically true. She would tell him it was ketchup. He’d believe her.

  “What’s Joe got to do with nails, though?”

  It was a reach, but her gut was giving her the green light so she aired her hunch out loud. “He used to be a carpenter; that’s what Wikipedia said. Maybe he thinks he still is one.”

  Terry nodded thoughtfully, and dried his hands on the dish towel hanging from the stove handle. “Maybe. Or maybe he’s just a jerk who likes to play with sharp things. Either way, I’m going to help clean this up.”

  Denise appreciated the help, but she wasn’t sure she should accept it. She half thought about sending him home for his own good. After all, she had a comic book upstairs that was basically a portent of doom; every time she read it, something bad happened.

  That was crazy, right? Too crazy to be true, for sure.

  She kept her mouth shut while she levered the hammer’s head up and down, dragging the nails up and out of the bannister and handing them to Terry, one after another.

  Until it was just full of holes.

  Denise hid her injured hand in her pocket. When no one was looking, she changed the Band-Aids and squeezed more ointment onto the ragged, round holes that were red and angry-looking, but were they more red and angry-looking than the day before? She couldn’t tell. She looked up “blood poisoning” online, because Terry had said she might get it. But no matter how hard she checked, she didn’t see any pink lines creeping out from the hole, creeping up her arm and toward her heart.

  She was slightly less certain about the symptoms of tetanus. She knew there were shots for that one and she’d probably had one in the recent past; but sometimes people called tetanus “lockjaw,” and that sounded much more disturbing. She opened and closed her mouth as wide as she could, over and over again—testing to see if anything was seizing up, or getting stiff.

  She really didn’t want to show it to anybody, despite Terry’s insistence that she get some proper medical attention. And of course, he had a suggestion. Terry always had a suggestion.

  According to him, the high school’s nurse moonlighted at a CVS clinic during the summer. Her name was Ms. Radlein, and when she wasn’t patching up kids at Rudy Lombard High, she was doling out vaccinations and advice in the pharmaceutical section of the nearest drugstore.

  By all reports, she was a popular and reasonable woman, and she had been known to be discreet. “Anyway, she’s a friend of my dad’s,” he’d finished. He’d given her directions to the bus that would take her there, and then he finally gave up trying to make her go—telling her to do whatever she wanted, but not to come crawling to him when she dropped dead.

  Denise wasn’t too keen on the idea of dropping dead.

  She also wasn’t keen on the idea of her mom and Mike finding out about this, so she sucked it up, and first thing in the morning she took the bus to the drugstore. It was less than two miles away, but she was glad for the sticky cool air of the bus, because outside it was far, far worse. She’d had to wait until Sally was across town, arguing with the bank about when the next disbursement of the loan would be coming down the pike—and Mike was sleeping in, doped a little on painkillers and worn out from his traumatic experience.

  Denise left a note, just in case. It was a vague note. It promised little, except that she was alive and she intended to return. If she was lucky, she’d be back in time to wad it up and throw it into the trash—and no one would ever read it.

  The drugstore was on a block with a strip mall that was brand-new, but half-empty. In addition to the CVS it held a cash-for-gold place, a cell phone shop, and a laundromat. The other three slots were vacant, but a sign promised a chain pizza joint: COMING SOON!

  Denise got off the bus and stood in a freshly paved parking lot with jet-black asphalt that felt like the surface of the sun, even through her flip-flops. She checked her hand for fresh swelling or streaks, took a deep breath, and pushed the glass door to let herself inside.

  The AC was as new as everything else; it hit her in the face so hard and so fast that it dried out her eyes. She blinked until they worked right again, checked the signs above the aisles, and headed to the back right corner of the store—where the drugs were doled out and the nurse allegedly lurked, ready to stab people with needles. Or whatever.

  She arrived at the small lobby area in front of the pharmacists’ window, where everything smelled sterile and new. It was quiet back there too. No one was waiting for a prescription, and the people in the white lab coats were all busy in the shelves, setting up medicine for absent customers.

  Around the fake wall that didn’t even reach to the ceiling, she could hear a woman’s voice explaining something calmly. A moment later, out stepped the girl whose name Denise was pretty sure was Dominique. She was stuffing something into her backpack, and when she realized that she’d been spotted, her eyes flashed. She zipped up her bag.

  She wouldn’t even look up as she fled.

  The nurse followed behind her. She was tall, thin, and white—with short silver hair and a gray pantsuit under an unbuttoned lab coat. She checked around, and saw that Denise was standing there, alone and shifty-looking. “Do you need tampons too?” she asked. “I know it gets tricky when school’s not in session, so I keep a stash. Are you new here? Did Dom or one of the other girls send you?”

  “No ma’am. That’s not … what I need.” She suddenly felt very self-conscious. “And yes ma’am, I’m new. I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t trying to … I can get my own tampons, thanks. We’re not rich, but we’re not that bad off. Yet,” she added.

  “All right then, what can I do for you?”

  She had a funny accent, one Denise couldn’t quite place. It almost sounded like a northern city accent, but she suspected that it wasn’t. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, feeling more awkward than if she really had come to collect some tampons.

  Denise pulled her hand out from under her backpack, where she’d gotten used to hiding it. “I … I hurt myself, at home. I can’t tell if it’s getting infected … ? I don’t know.” She peeled off the bandage and waved her hand a little, shaking off the sting.

  The woman, whose name tag confirmed that she was “Nurse Radlein,” assumed an expression of cautious concern. She took Denise’s hand and turned it over, checking the entry and exit punctures. “How did this happen?”

  “Rusty nail. My mom and stepdad are fixing up an old house. It’s a craphole,” Denise said, preemptively. It was becoming a defensive habit. “I wasn’t paying attention. Nobody’s fault but my own,” she added. That part was defensive too.

  “The nail went right through, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been trying to keep it clean, but … I don’t know. Am I going to get blood poisoning, or something?”

  “When was your last tetanus shot?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Nurse Radlein released her hand, and withdrew toward the nook around the wall—motioning for Denise to follow her. “It can’t have been too long ago. You hav
e to provide vaccination records before enrolling in school. You’re not homeschooled, are you?”

  “No ma’am. Public school, but I’ve been in Texas.” She stood there uncertainly, squeezing her hurt hand with her unhurt hand and wondering if this was really such a good idea.

  Nurse Radlein glanced up, and then waved her closer. “All right, well. Go ahead and sit down.”

  The nurse sat on the edge of her desk, motioning for Denise’s hand again. When she had it in her grasp once more for an up close and personal inspection, she said, “This isn’t bad at all, and I don’t see any signs of infection. You’ve done a good job taking care of it. When did it happen?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Then I wouldn’t worry too much, because it’s looking good. But in case it’s been a few years since your tetanus booster, you might want to get another one, just in case. It can’t hurt, and might help.”

  Denise shook her head. “Naw, I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my parents … um … they don’t know about this. I didn’t want to worry them. We don’t have much money, and my stepdad already had to go to the urgent care place.”

  “You’ve got money enough to fix a house. Money enough for tampons over the summer, apparently.”

  “I didn’t … I wasn’t being all judgy about that.” Denise’s eyes narrowed. “Look, we barely had money enough to buy that house, even though it’s practically condemned. I know there’s kids who are broker than us, but we aren’t flush.”

  “I didn’t say you were. All I meant was—”

  “We’ve got every last dime tied up in this awful old place, and it’ll probably fall down anyway, before we can prop it up good. Don’t act like tampons and tetanus shots are the same thing. Just ’cause I can swing one doesn’t mean I can have both.”

  “I understand that,” the nurse insisted. “But I can help you with free tampons, and not a free tetanus shot. That’s what I’m trying to tell you: Your resources may be limited, but you’ve got more to work with than some people—and I can help you juggle them more wisely.”