by J. E. Taylor
“Damn it.” Operating with my hand in this condition was out of the question. My fingers throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I crossed to the sink; I slid my hand under the cool stream. The minute I turned the faucet off, the pain flared again and I hissed. Swearing under my breath, I grabbed the oven mitt and picked up the silver chalice. I dropped it into the stainless-steel sink and the beads of water in the basin boiled on contact.
Fear crept up my back and brought a metal tinge to my mouth.
I doused the glass with water from the spout. A billow of steam rose and the water sizzled, making a sound close to a scream of protest.
I let the water flow and went in search of a salve for the blisters. An aloe plant flourished on the living room windowsill; I snapped the tip of a branch off and squeezed the sticky liquid onto my burns. The heat in my fingertips dulled, but even the minute pressure of the gel created a stab that cascaded up my arm like wild-fire.
Before I could inspect my wounds, the shrill ring of the phone broke through the silence. I scooped it off the base, pressed the on button and brought it to my ear without looking at the caller ID.
“Hello, baby.”
I blinked, unable to focus, unable to believe the seductive timbre flowing through the phone line. The scratchy laugh that followed turned my stomach into a cold rock, shriveled my insides, and turned my intestines to jelly. I barely made it to the couch before the world swam and the phone slipped out of my fingers. The last thing I remember was the dial tone beeping in time with my frantic heartbeat.
I ROLLED INTO THE HOSPITAL later than expected with my hand cradled against my chest. I had canceled my surgeries for the day and alerted Rebecca of the nature of my injury. When I walked into the emergency room, she bolted to my side, took my hand and inspected the angry red blisters covering the surface of my palm and fingers.
“What did you do, put your hand on a hot burner?” Rebecca’s brow furrowed with worry.
“Actually, that’s exactly what happened. I was reaching for a glass in the cabinet above the stove and lost my balance.” A lie was the only sane choice. If I told the truth, they would lock me up in the psych ward faster than I could blink.
“Jesus, this is going to take a while to heal. You really did a number on it.” Rebecca led me into the burn unit, where my hand was treated and wrapped.
I walked into the chief of surgery’s office. Dr. Mark Richards leveled an unhappy stare in my direction. His lips pressed tightly together and his gaze dropped to my bandaged hand and back to my face. “You look like you need a week of sleep, Holly.”
“More like a month.” I waved his comment off.
“I’m taking you off rotation until you’re given the all-clear from Dr. Soronsky and I’m ordering you to get some rest.”
My jaw fell open at both the directive and the edge in his voice. “But that could be as long as a month.”
Dr. Richards nodded. “Yes, I’m well aware of that but you haven’t taken any time off since before Jacob died. And the death of that child yesterday could have been prevented if you were at the top of your game.”
A slap would have been more humane. I inhaled at the sting of his words. I opened my mouth to argue and his hand came up to silence me.
“No arguments. Now go and I don’t want to see you back at this hospital until you get the thumbs-up.”
TWO DAYS AND I WAS climbing the walls. Daytime television sucked and there were only so many books in the place that were worthy of being read a second time. I had already blown through the four books I pulled from the shelves.
When Jacob was alive and I had time off, we would go for a bike ride or a hiking excursion or take a trip into the city to see a show or go to a museum. I was in no mood to trek into the city on my own and the outdoor activities were not suited for winter.
No, when I had time off in the dead of winter, Jacob took a few hours at lunch time and we spent the afternoon in bed, exploring each other and then eating cheese and crackers and ripened grapes. Those memories burned inside and created a dull ache in my heart.
“Oh Jacob. Why’d you have to go and die on me?”
The house didn’t have an answer for me. I scanned the book shelves for something, anything to occupy my mind. Medical books and law journals lined the shelves and I sighed. My gaze landed on some old theology books and I arched my eyebrow. I pulled When Bad Things Happen to Good People from the shelf, sat down on the couch and flipped through the pages.
My vision warbled and my eyelids slid closed. I blinked, my body jerking from the dream fall. The dark room met my surprised stare. The book lay on the floor next to the couch and I sat up, arching my back in a stretch to work out the stiff kinks.
“How long have I been asleep?” My scratchy voice filled the room. I headed to the bathroom to relieve the pressure in my bladder and then headed for the kitchen to calm the growling in my stomach.
The kitchen was bright under the full moon shining through the skylights. I looked up, stared at the old man in the moon and sighed. I scanned the meager pickings in the refrigerator. I hadn’t been shopping in a while. I reached for the juice and an unfamiliar sound upstairs gave me pause. I closed the refrigerator and stood, frozen to the spot; my ears strained to hear above the knocking of my heart. My glance shot to the digital clock on the stove.
Midnight on the dot.
The witching hour.
A cold breeze snaked over the skin of my arms and they altered into a Braille relief map of goose bumps. A scraping sound like a branch dragging across the wooden planks of our bedroom floor came again and my bladder squeezed in fear. Someone, or something, was in my house. If I hadn’t already relieved myself, I would have been standing in a warm puddle.
I grabbed the butcher knife out of the cutting block and tiptoed toward the stairs. Each step forward caught my breath in my throat; my heart throbbed in my chest and set every nerve ending on alert.
My vision had the fuzzy quality of a nightmare. My mind screamed for me to run, to find refuge at the hospital where it was safe. My muscles trembled, wanting to listen to the panicked mantra in my mind, but under the fear lay a stubborn resolve. This was my home. No one had a right to rummage through my things, through Jacob’s things. That resolve moved me forward in the dark.
I slid into the doorway of my bedroom and held my breath at the sight of the dark figure illuminated by the window. I flipped on the overhead light switch. Bright light swept through the room and washed across the back of the stranger.
I recognized the suit—the suit I buried Jacob in.
The knife slipped out of my fingers and sliced into the wood floor with a clang. The world warbled and I followed the path of the knife into darkness.
I woke lying in the middle of my bed, dressed in my favorite negligee. My head was propped on the pillows and the stranger sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me. I scrambled back into the headboard and he turned in my direction.
Oh, how I wished he had never turned toward me. This wasn’t Jacob; it couldn’t be my Jacob. Oh Lord, what have I done?
His blackened, rotted lips and blood red eyes scared the snot out of me. A gravelly voice whispered my name. The sound reminded me of the hiss of an exhumed grave. I shivered. Fingernails with a year’s worth of dirt underneath raked across my leg and created a sensation of a thousand spiders. I clamped my lips on a scream of terror.
I pulled my leg away and he laughed that dark, haunting laugh I heard through the phone line.
“Sweet thing, I can play games just as well as you can.” His partially decomposed hand clasped my ankle and yanked me toward him.
The shriek peeled from my throat and left it as raw and tender as my fractured soul. I tried to wrench out of his grasp, but he was too strong. I kicked; my foot connected with his chest. Bones broke under the pressure and his grip on my ankle faltered enough for me to roll away and off the side of the bed. I hopped to my feet and spun to face the possessed body of my dead husband.
His chuckle filled the room and he crossed the space between us like a velociraptor cornering its prey. His eyes gleamed murderous intent and I backed into the wall. My gaze darted between the animated corpse and the door beyond.
The incantation flew through my mind. I said exactly what was written in the gypsy’s note. Word for word. And this is what was raised in response? How could that be? The truth slammed into me harder than a two-by-four and the memory of the gypsy’s sputtered Latin curses came back. The clarity of the words rang in my ears, along with the literal translation: May the devil rise and drag your damned soul back to hell.
Sweet Jesus, the gypsy cursed the ritual.
“What are you?” My voice shook and my heart thundered in my chest. Somehow I broke my paralysis and slid to my right, closer to the door and out of reach of this monstrosity.
“I’m the king of the demons, darling, and you are just as delicious as promised.” His rotting hand beckoned me forward and I fought against the strong pull to give up, to step into his grasp, to end my misery.
My feet didn’t share in the resistance and I went to take a step forward.
“Holly, don’t.”
That voice I knew. My gaze darted beyond Jacob’s dead corpse to the shimmering space beyond. There, in a haze of ambient light, stood my Jacob. His azure eyes pled with me to keep the faith and not give in to this beast.
Movement caught me by surprise and before my gaze traveled from Jacob to the demon, his hand clamped on my throat; his fetid breath filled my nostrils and his decomposing body pressed against mine. Bile rose in my throat and I struggled under the rough assault of bone and flesh invading me, violating me in ways I couldn’t imagine. My chest burned with the scream caught behind the pressure on my larynx. His dark chuckle filled my ears and I met Jacob’s gaze over the shoulder of the creature.
Help me!
The apparition stepped forward and disappeared into the dark shadows. The demon stiffened against me: his clothes billowed as if he stepped over a subway air grate and then settled a moment later. The grip on my throat loosened and he stumbled backwards, away from me. The red eyes pulsed, morphing into the blue eyes I loved for so long.
“Holly, get the knife.” Jacob pointed to the butcher knife in the floor, his face a knotted mess of muscle and bone and tattered flesh. “Hurry. I don’t know how long I can hold him.”
I didn’t question the instruction until I had the knife in my grip and turned to him.
“Stab me in the heart.”
His words didn’t compute and I stared at him, seeing his ratty corpse transform into the body that visited my dreams. Perfect, strong and beautiful. My Jacob—whole again.
“Baby, you have to destroy my heart. It’s the only way.”
My mouth dropped and my eyes misted with tears. My chest constricted with the thought and my lungs reacted, squeezing the air out in a flood of words. “Jacob, I can’t. I lost you once—I, I, I can’t do it again.”
“It’s the only way to send this bastard back to hell, baby. Just do it before he wins, please!”
He fought to hold onto the transformation but his form wavered between my perfect Jacob and the thing that crawled out of the grave. His eyes blinked like a lone warning light, transitioning between blue and red. His hands balled into fists; the muscles rippled under the strain. “Please, Holly...”
The plea in his voice jump-started me into action and I raised the knife. “Forgive me.” I plunged the blade into his disintegrating chest.
Light flared and the roar of the blast filled my world. I was lifted off my feet and tossed across the room like a flung ragdoll. The drywall met my flight with the resolve of a brick and my head bounced from the force. Right before the black veil descended, I saw my Jacob reaching for me.
“I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG she’s been...” Rebecca trailed off and traded a glance with the officer. She crossed her arms across her chest and rubbed her biceps to ward off the shakes. “She wasn’t answering her phone and I got worried, so I swung by on the way home from work.” She swallowed both the fear and the bile lining her throat. “The door was unlocked and I knew something was wrong the minute I stepped inside.” Her gaze darted toward the stairwell. “What the hell could do that to a person?” She waved her hand toward the forensic team cataloging the bloody carnage.
“I don’t know, but the blast nearly killed your friend,” the officer said.
The EMTs rolled the gurney past Rebecca and she sighed at the sight of Holly, covered in blood and gore, catatonic and unresponsive—her gaze fixed on a spot in the distance and only one word repeating every few seconds like a skipping record.
The continuous mantra chilled Rebecca more than the frigid winter wind.
“Jacob...Jacob...Jacob...”
The End
House Rules
I looked at the business card in my hand and then up at the ancient house. From the outside, it looked as if no one had lifted a finger in upkeep for years. But the man who gave the card to me was one of those fatally attractive types. The minute his dark eyes landed on me, wetness dripped between my legs. I can’t even remember his name, but the sound of his voice still hummed in my ears and his spicy scent wafted around me like magician’s smoke.
He had taken the seat next to me at the five-card stud table and as I threw my last dollar in the pot, he glanced at his cards and folded. Unfortunately, the dealer’s hand beat mine and my stomach dropped to the floor.
Dark eyes leaned close and slid the card into my hand. “Maybe next time you’d like to frequent a house where your odds are better.”
Just his touch sent a rash of gooseflesh across my skin, along with some of the more lewd thoughts to go along with it. I think I even came a little when he flashed his grin at me.
That was two weeks ago and as soon as I got my paycheck, I put on this old silk dress and pulled the card that I had taped to the refrigerator. As I stared at it, I debated whether to use a portion of my gambling money for a ride to the casino or to the address listed on the card.
And now I was wished I hadn’t sent the cab off the minute he dropped me at the curb. Silence blanketed this section of the neighborhood and the iron fence creaked as I pushed it open. As soon as I stepped onto the walkway, the sub-bass beat I hadn’t noticed at the curb pounded into the soles of my high heels.
I glanced at the card again, just to make sure. The blood-red address stood out on the white vellum. I ran my thumb over the letters. Below the looping script read Formal Attire Required, as if it had been stamped on as an afterthought.
The dress I wore matched the color of the text and I bit my lip. My insides scrambled, raising a siren that almost made me turn and run, but my feet had other ideas and moved me forward toward the door and the beat that pounded in the ground beneath me.
The hesitation in my blood burned, leaving me annoyed at my skittish response to the old house. The drapes covering the windows didn’t give a hint at what played beyond them. Under a moonless sky, the dark seemed absolute, as though the house were just an extension of the night.
The first wooden stair creaked under my weight and the pounding became less pronounced. Each step screamed at me and by the time I climbed the dozen steps to the covered entry, I was more than just a little spooked. One glance behind me at the fog that rose thick enough to block the view of the road made my decision. I turned and banged the ancient brass knocker three times.
I shifted my purse from one hand to the other and just as I turned away to find the road and a long walk home, the high-pitched whine of the door hinge pulled my attention.
“May I help you?” The words sounded as if the elderly gentleman had grave dirt in his mouth. I let out a nervous laugh and glanced beyond him into the grand foyer of the house.
I handed him the business card, unable to speak at the spectacle before me. The entry looked just as ignored as the front of the house. When the butler smiled and waved me insi
de, I shivered, unable to move from my spot.
“Um, the man who gave me that card...”
“Yes. Mr. Kaine mentioned you might drop by. Please, come in and I will bring you to the casino,” he said.
All I needed to hear was casino and my brain stopped functioning, turned off all the warning signs that accosted my body. I stepped over the threshold and scanned the decrepit home. The sound of the door shutting behind me gave me a start as the ancient butler started toward the hallway to the right of the sweetheart staircase.
The hall was dark and musty. I had to rub my nose to keep from sneezing, but my eyes still burst with tears to fight the dust. I blinked them away. A great wooden door stood at the end of the hall. The old wood glowed under the low light bleeding through the frame, outlining the graceful arch at the top. When the butler opened it, it let out a groan that was drowned by a modern beat.
Music drifted up the stairs; the butler waved his hand and stepped aside so I could pass. Once I was on the landing, the door closed. I sensed that my only way out had just been shut off.
I tried to shed the weight on my chest, but with each step, both the music and a level of fear that left my mouth sour pressed against me. I licked my lips with a tongue that carried no saliva. I took the last turn and stopped. The gaming floor laid out in front of me seemed bigger than the footprint of the house. My breath stalled with that familiar pulse beat in the back of my throat that spread a tingling need through me.