A God of Hungry Walls

by Garrett Cook

  I glean so many secrets that the Closetsong didn’t tell me. The Closetsong had that leverage over me but it doesn’t have it anymore. Beaten by his father, tormented by the Closetsong, living his whole life in denial of what he saw, telling himself that building after building would be safe. Trying to take risks but afraid to really stick out because it was better to stay hidden and stay safe. Cursed by pills and liquor, a desire to numb and make it go away, giving the Closetsong so many opportunities for it to keep its promise.

  He lost one girl he lost to drugs and infidelity. He tried to keep her from going out and scoring again and from bringing home men while he was at work. He begged her to stay healthy, begged her to go into the hospital but she never did because she loved her poison and her infidelity more than she loved him. She believed in him and the guitar. He never felt he held her tight enough. He had always thought that love would find a way. It never did. I see now why he is so fond of Kaz and yet he fears her so. She smelled familiar. They have a child together now but he doesn’t know that yet.

  The other girl he lost was more precious still. This one actually loved him and supported him. This one believed in him and his guitar and did her best for both him and the guitar. This one loved his playing and loved him. This one he could never tell the truth. This one didn’t know what lurked in the closet and this one didn’t know his doubt and his fear and his silence and what they meant. This one is the reason that he doesn’t play the guitar. He lost her and all that he had to do to lose her was to be himself.

  This is a man who loses again and again. He cannot do anything but. He can run and he can hide in the safest, darkest spots that he can find but he will always be found and he will always lose and life will bring down the belt again and I will bring down the belt. Antonia is mewling like a kitten. She is genuinely afraid and well she should be. She knows the price that he is choosing to pay and how he will end up paying it. She knew he would lose from the getgo but she does not want to be a part of it and doesn’t want him to lose because of her.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she says, as I peel flesh from her face to once again remind him that he makes his sacrifices for a dead girl like a fool and nothing he can do can let her live again. I peel the skin from off her chest and let him see the muscles and sinew and the ribcage and the beating heart. I let him see what he is giving all this up for and how funny it is to me that he would make this choice. And then I replace the muscles and then I replace the bones and then I let him see again the skin that identifies her as her and that the woman that he gives this up for is still there, she is still right there for him and that he should be grateful.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she repeats, “he’ll have you now and he can do whatever he wants with you. There will be no escaping him now no matter where you go and you’ll be part of these walls just like I am.”

  “You’re worth it,” he says, which makes her hiss at him like a cat.

  “Worth it for you the living to trade freedom for the dead? You goddamned fool, you really have no clue.”

  She holds him.

  “I WAS MURDERED.”

  “I know.”

  “No,” she says, through fog of tears and choked up sobs, “you don’t and you couldn’t possibly know just what that means and what it makes me. And what it’s going to make you. I should go now and leave you alone. You should flee this house, if he isn’t already in you so deep that it won’t matter. He might have gotten in you and that means you can’t flee. Julie couldn’t flee and she’s come back here. You’re going to be like me and like her and like Leah.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Leah’s alive.”

  “No. She’s killed herself and she belongs to him now. She belongs to the house and the walls and the god in the walls. She is dead. And Kaz is dead. You can get out of here before its too late but it might just be too late. Especially because of what you just did.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you,” he says, strong, hard and obstinate.

  “You risk your life for one already dead. You couldn’t possibly be any more stupid, could you? What if I told you I never really cared about you and everything I’ve done is because of this thing manipulating me and that I’m nothing but an empty puppet and I could never love a man like you? Hmm? What if I told you that.”

  He looks up at her, a smile creeping onto his face.

  “Then you would be a liar.”

  She peels the very flesh from her face again and from her breast and lets him see again that she is bone and viscera and no force of animation behind it. She lets him see for certain that she is dead.

  “I need you to get out of here. There will be no end to our suffering if you don’t.”

  “If he’s murdered all of these people, then it’s already too late.”

  She hangs her head. She knows that he is right.

  “Then at least we will see a whole lot of each other.”

  Parlor Games

  “Thank you for doing this,” says Brian, “I feel like I’m fucking crazy.”

  “You are fucking crazy. But that’s okay. I know the feeling.”

  A board game with a plank, a planchette is in his hand. He wants to speak to me with a children’s toy. In a way, I suppose this makes sense, though he does not necessarily appreciate the irony of one of my playthings trying to treat me like I was just a game to be played. He sets the box down on the floor and replaces it with a beer, which he screws open quickly before handing Kaz a beer of her own.

  “You sure we should be drinking and doing this?” Kaz asks.

  Brian shakes his head.

  “Fuck no,” he replies, “there’s no way in Hell we should be.”

  “I dig,” says Kaz, taking a giant swig. She suddenly notices that Brian is very handsome. She remembers that she had wanted to have sex with Brian before all these things had happened with Doctorpuppet. Though she’d always wanted Doctorpuppet. She gets distracted by the thought of him inside her, those arms honed from playing and hauling gear pinning her down as he enters her. The game should bring them closer together.

  She knows it’s not just a game. She’s seen the face of the First Girl and she knows that they’re not alone here. She doesn’t know how they aren’t alone. She seems to think Doctorpuppet even has a home he goes to. She cannot possibly be this stupid. I see into her and know that she is not but that she would simply rather all these things make sense to her, terrible as they are.

  They put their hands on the planchette, sweaty trembling hands that have touched and wandered across each other’s bodies before though she doesn’t remember. Their hands remember though, brush against each other, remember the architecture. Her hands hesitate some before they hit the planchette. She knows that this is wrong. It is very wrong.

  “Hello,” he says, “spirits in the house, we ask that you show your presence.”

  I bring forth a screaming Antonia, who shakes her head and tries so hard not to weep outright. She knows now to knock on the wall by her cage. She walks to the spot and gives the wall a rap. Kaz tries to pull away from the planchette but Brian covers her hand with his. He needs this.

  “Sorry,” Kaz whispers.

  “It’s okay,” he says.

  “Antonia?”

  I shift the planchette to “NO”.

  “Is this the entity that haunts this house?”

  I shift the planchette to “YES”.

  He breathes in. He closes his eyes. It takes a great deal of courage and energy to ask the next question.

  “Where is Leah?”

  I take great pleasure in this. He does not seem to know the depth and breadth of me. He seems to think I’m some little shit that spooks people and raps on walls and puts corpses behind him in the closet. He does not get that in these walls there lurks a god and that god requires sacrifice and restitution and that god must be honored with all his being.

  “DEAD” I spell out.

  Upstairs, I pull op
en the door to her room. I find myself hoping they will go up and check but they remain still. Kaz has had a sneaking suspicion that something is wrong with Leah and that suspicion was of course well founded. He sighs again, breathes deep again, if he prayed, he’d pray to something this time but he does not pray.

  “Are Micah and Cytherea all right?”

  “YES,” I say through the planchette.

  “They go out to things sometimes,” says Kaz, “for a week or so at a time.”

  “They would have left a note,” says Brian.

  Kaz shakes her head.

  “That’s not what they’re like.”

  And it isn’t. They don’t tend to show much concern or affection for those around them unless they want to use or fuck them. This is how the people around them could go for days without acknowledging they were gone and when they’re gone all the way I can toss their bodies aside for as long as I need to.

  “I’m worried,” says Brian, “something’s very wrong.”

  “It’s nothing,” says Kaz, “it’s just a toy. There’s nothing going on here. We should stop this.”

  Antonia moves the planchette to “NO.” They will not stop, we will not tolerate it. He needs to know my sentiments. He needs to know just what he is dealing with. They both shudder. To have an unasked question answered is a disconcerting thing in a game like this one.

  “What do you want?” he asks me. The question is large and laughable. What do I want? I couldn’t answer it if I tried. All things that I see that can be had I have. So I want all things that can be had.

  “LET ME IN,” Antonia says through the planchette. He gulps. Kaz takes her hand off the planchette.

  “I don’t like this,” we need to stop this.

  “No!” Brian screams, “Something is wrong here. This house is haunted. This house is hell.”

  Kaz puts his hands on her thighs. She shakes her head “no.”

  “You’re being crazy.”

  “Then what the hell are you afraid of?”

  Kaz gets up and paces the room. She looks at the corner, knowing what she’s seen there, she lets her eyes wander to the stairs, which she considers running up. She wants to see if Leah is actually dead up there. But if she ascends the stairs she is confessing that something is wrong, that maybe her child and Doctorpuppet and everything in her life that is beautiful and good has been brought to her by something strange and terrible. So she returns to him and sits down across from him again.

  “Fine,” she says, face grim, “we’ll find out.”

  “Will you show me what you are if I let you in?”

  Antonia moves the planchette.

  “Yes.”

  “Stop this,” says the Closetsong.

  He closes his eyes and concentrates. The Closetsong tries to push me away but he is begging to know about Antonia, he is begging to know about me. He calls out to me and I comply. I take him elsewhere. I show him things he does not want to see.

  “Do you understand now?” I ask him, my voice reverberating through his body, through his mind and heart.

  “This is my place. All who walk through this threshold belong to me and I may do with them as they please. I can give you this for one thousand years. I can drive them to destroy themselves and hide the bodies in corners of time and space where they will never be found. You must comply or she will see worse than this. You will call nobody. You will doubt nothing. You will stay here and you will take what you are given.”

  “I understand,” he says.

  “Do you get it?” I scream shrilly, “do you see?”

  Clarence is pounding her ass and whipping her, nipples clamped, mouth gagged. Her shoulders shimmer with red and if I had a cock it would be three feet long right now. Her eyes are filled with tears and she is begging. She knows something is down there though does not know that something is me. She is unlubricated as always and blood is collecting. Brian’s agape, Brian’s trembling. Brian doesn’t know what to do. Brian wants to help her, reaches out.

  “STOP! STOP THAT!”

  He coils back, lunges, punches Doctorpuppet in the back of his head. His fist goes clean through, a fist of the present that cannot touch a skull of the past. This does not stop him from screaming and trying more, which doesn’t stop Doctorpuppet from fucking her ass some more and the gag doesn’t stop Antonia from screaming more. This is history and history is a force of nature, bloodthirsty and implacable. History rapes and runs roughshod over all.

  “Stop! You son of a bitch! Stop!”

  “You have let her in and so in turn let me in. I have taken you here to show you.”

  Clarence stops after what must feel to Brian as long as it felt to Antonia, something I have made sure is so. Clarence dismounts and Maddy comes down the stairs with a chair. She sets in down in front of Antonia and removes the girl’s gag.

  “You’re such a dirty little whore. You know that? Such a stupid, illbred, cockloving, filthy whore. God can’t love you if you give into all your dirty little fantasies, you know. You know what Clarence says. These aren’t healthy.”

  “I know,” says Antonia, “I just want you both so badly all the time. It surges through me and poisons my mind and my loins. I’m sorry but I can’t resist you. I pray for strength to want to be good but I can’t be good and maybe I don’t want to.”

  Brian is chilled to see a mind disassembled like this, to hear somebody say words that have been carved on her brain by somebody else’s abuse and brainwashing.

  “You want so many dirty and terrible things,” says Maddy stroking Antonia’s hair, “I don’t know what to do with you. We all want you to be healthy and safe and to make it to Heaven. We want you to be in good enough shape emotionally and spiritually to leave. And we know you want that.”

  “Yes, mother, I want that,” says Antonia.

  “But the problem,” says Maddy, “is that you don’t. Your asshole is bleeding, Antonia. Good girls don’t let boys do things like that to them. Good girls don’t want that. And you’re looking at my pussy now, Antonia.”

  Maddy spreads open the lips with her fingers, showing depths that nothing should want to crawl into, starting to ooze with cream so thick it could have come out of a cock it looks like.

  “Do you want to be free of this?” I ask him, “I can liberate you from this if you give yourself to me. Will you do that?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I can’t look away.”

  I don’t understand this. Antonia, Clarence, Maddy, the First Girl and Julie all want to look away, all want to be removed from these situations. But he is standing firm, even as Maddy grabs Antonia by the hair and pushes her face into her, controlling her like a marionette by yanking. Her face is so close and so deep, it seems like she could drown or slip inside and never emerge again.

  Clarence is sitting on the floor, his cock hardening once more. He’s starting to masturbate to the sight of his pet eating his monstrous wife’s big fat, pustulent cunt, drowning it, maybe never to come out again. Brian still locks eyes with this nightmare. Brian still stares head on.

  Maddy pushes Antonia’s face away.

  “You had your fill?” she asks.

  Antonia shakes her head.

  “No mother,” says Antonia.

  Maddy slaps Antonia hard across the face.

  “You’re such a dumb little fucking whore. You’re lucky we’re here to take care of and feed you, you know that? Otherwise, there’s no telling what would happen to a stupid little shit-for-brains whore like you.”

  Antonia nods emphatically.

  “Yes, mother.”

  Family Bonding

  Kaz has gone out and brought another man home. This time it was not at the behest of the Closetsong. I have something to show it today, something I hope that it will hold close and sacred and will never forget.

  Kaz shoves the gaptoothed stranger against the door. She kisses him something savage, bloody, unhinged. She clamps down on his bottom lip, holding back her laughter. H
is face is old and sunken in though his mind and body might have been something younger. His eyes are on the verge of tears even before the bite. His hair is the texture of straw but so much thinner. His body is bony, his heart so often either fast or slow. I do not want this thing but it’s been presented to me and I shall take it if I absolutely must. And I absolutely must because it has crossed my threshold. I let one of them go and I will not make the same mistake again. I still think that it was the Closetsong that did that. Even if it wasn’t, I choose to blame the Closetsong.

  “Slow down,” says the man, choking back fear. He has never encountered this kind of aggression before. He knows he has reason to fear her for what she is becoming. It’s almost as if he can feel that she doesn’t belong to herself. It’s almost as if he can feel that she belongs to me. I have been very active after all, so the air is thick with me and all I’ve done.

  She doesn’t slow down. The tempo of her kissing and stroking only increases, the aggression only increases. Her hand is between his legs and she is squeezing. He wants to get free. He can’t get free. He does not want at all to get free. There is nothing on the other side of freedom and there is plenty to be had inside of her. I consider letting him see Doctorpuppet manifesting around the corner, cock in hand watching as the mother of his spawn starts in on this man. I let Doctorpuppet do his business but this man is scared enough that he might not surrender right and I can’t quite have him not surrender right.

  He nervously and tenuously ventures a hand up to Kaz’s breast and squeezes. Kaz gives him a wicked smile, a confident knowing one as she lets go of him and pulls his hand to take him down the hallway with all the roughness and all the abandon of a child dragging their teddy bear bouncing up and down stairs. He can only follow even though he still quite justifiably fears her. For all that drugs and drink and jail have taken from him, he is not altogether unaware of the dangerous thing he is dealing with and what she could mean.