What Price Gory?

by West, Terry M.

  Mommy had gotten Billy an important job right away after he finished college. And Billy had finished college early, because he was smarter than most. Mommy was able to get Billy this job because she had been a sponsor for the company that hired him. Susie wasn’t sure what a sponsor was, exactly, but she guessed it had something to do with having money and getting what you wanted, which Mommy always did.

  Susie didn’t understand Billy’s job. She asked him about it on the terrace of their home one day while their breakfast cooled in the breeze. He gave her what information he was able and tried to explain it in a way she understood. Billy was good at doing that.

  He explained that he worked on alternate forms of energy, because one day the world might need more than oil to get by. Billy cared very deeply about this. Susie could tell by the passion in his voice when he explained it to her. And this made it important to Susie, as well.

  A few days after this discussion, well-dressed men came to the house. They were there for a very important meeting with Mommy. They went to the study, and Susie ventured to bed, because it was her bedtime and the meeting had been for sponsors only.

  That night, Mommy came to Susie. She was crying in the glow of the nightlight. There had been an accident. Billy was dead. He had been caught in a lab explosion.

  They went to his sad funeral two days later. The people running the funeral kept Billy’s casket closed. Susie cried for a solid week after that.

  When her sadness over it was finally starting to run out, she was woken in the late night by what she thought at first was the Bogeyman. It was a ghostly figure, dressed in a bloody lab coat. It wore a rubber clown mask, with fake, green hair. Susie was about to scream for her Mommy. The monster clamped a gray hand with dirty black fingernails over her mouth.

  The monster whispered a gentle reassurance to her.

  It was Billy. He wasn’t gone. The whole thing had been a trick. There had been an accident, but it hadn’t taken Billy from them. Bad people had put him in a quiet place that no one knew about, but Billy had escaped. Susie wanted to tell Mommy the glorious news, but Billy explained that Mommy was evil. She was one of them, now; one of the bad people that wanted to keep Billy locked up and forgotten about. Mommy had known what had happened, and had even instructed the bad people herself to imprison Billy.

  He took Susie with him that night, and she went willingly. If Mommy would do that to Billy, her favorite, then what would she be willing to do with Susie, if an accident suddenly made her sick and ugly?

  So Billy took Susie to this house far away and deep in the woods. He told her it was an asset someone had hidden and forgotten about. The house was a little scary, at first. She did like all of the old antiques and stuff. Susie sometimes asked Billy who the house had been for, and he always told her it was theirs, now, and that was all that mattered.

  They had electricity and water. There was always money and food, and sometimes they even had a car. When they did, Billy would put on his President mask- the Jimmy Carter one with big teeth, which could pass for a real face from a distance, and he would drop Susie in front of stores and watch for her carefully as she shopped. Billy was always looking out for her. If she was outside the house, playing in the woods, one of his faces was always there, in a window, keeping watch. The only time Billy left her was on those nights he had to go out. And she hated those nights. She did not like being alone in the house. It was dark, scary and things made noises, sometimes. Luckily, it wasn’t that often that he had to venture away without her. It was usually when he was in one of his moods. And he was in one now, so Susie prepared herself for the lonely night.

  She didn’t understand all of the mechanics of their life; she merely accepted them. The main thing was that they were safe; from Mommy and the bad people. She and Billy always had to look out for spies. It was hard on Susie, sometimes; living and hiding like she had done something wrong.

  Billy made their new life easier for Susie by telling her this was a fairy tale house, in the woods, and she was a Princess. Princess Susie. This was her castle and he was her knight, although, sometimes he could act more like a grumpy ogre.

  Susie had a hard time recalling what Billy looked like before the accident. She wished she had thought of bringing some of the family pictures with her when they left River Oaks. The masks were her brother now. And she had grown to love them all, except the scary one.

  She looked to her book again, wishing Billy was able to read her a story, now. He wouldn’t come near when he was like this. She loved this book so much, and was so surprised to see it in the treasure box. She remembered the first time she had seen it. It wasn’t hers, then.

  It belonged to Neal. He was a frightened and lost Boy Scout who had shown up late one night at their door. Neal was hungry and had been alone in the darkness for awhile. Billy, wearing his happy face, had made a meal and a bed for the boy. Billy promised to see the lost child home the next day. It was nice having another kid around, even if it had to be a boy. Susie noticed the book sticking out of his backpack, and she had wanted it badly. When Susie woke the next day, Neal was gone. Billy said he had taken him to the road early in the morning, and the boy would be able to find his way home from there.

  As a gesture, Neal had left the book for Susie. When she earned enough stars to claim it from the treasure box, it was stained, which she hadn’t noticed before. Billy told her that it had been that way all along. She just hadn’t seen it; though she had admired the book pretty closely. Billy explained that he had even asked Neal about such a large stain, and the boy had confessed to spilling strawberry juice on it.

  She had felt a little guilty at first, even though Neal had insisted on her having it. Then she remembered what Mommy had told about having nice things, and she enjoyed the book after that.

  Susie sighed and decided to try and get some sleep without a bedtime story. She was already in her floral pajamas. She took a brush from the window ledge near her bed and brushed at her thick brown hair.

  There was a knock at the front door. Susie bit her lower lip. Someone had found them, and Billy was in a mood. She knew she would have to answer it, and she prayed it wasn’t the bad people.

  Susie quickly left her room, worked the stairs of the house with her small feet and opened the door, before it could be banged on again. She knew one of Billy’s faces would be watching from the dark.

  “Thank God,” the man said, stepping inside though he hadn’t been invited in. “I thought this place was abandoned. I didn’t know there was any folks this side of Pleasant Storm.”

  Susie closed the door and looked the stranger over. He was tall and heavy-set. He wore dirty grey clothes that looked like some kind of work uniform and his hair was greasy and covered by a well-worn baseball cap. He needed a shave and he sweated a lot. He also smelled funny. Not bad, just funny; like strong medicine. Mommy would smell this way sometimes, and the strong medicine used to make her act pretty silly.

  The man looked shaken and unsteady.

  “You okay, mister?” Susie asked.

  “I’m fine,” the man said, looking the house over. “I had a nasty spill on the road. My car is stuck in a ditch. Are your parents around?”

  “No,” Susie said, leaving it at that. She explained no further; Billy always told her to never give out information if she didn’t have to.

  She was going to keep her answers short, because Billy was watching, and she wanted to show him she was following the rules. She needed more gold stars and, besides, it was none of this man’s business. Her Mommy was an evil sponsor and her daddy was a mystery, and this stranger didn’t need to know these things.

  “You aren’t here by yourself, are you?” the man asked curiously.

  “My brother Billy is upstairs. He’s a grown up.”

  The man nodded, eyes gazing up the spiral staircase that ascended into darkness. “Could I speak to him, please?”

  Susie nodded. The man seemed nice enough, but she wasn’t going to put any like on
him, whether he was a spy or not. The man was standing in her and Billy’s secret, and the sooner they got this stranger out of their house and life, the better.

  The man followed Susie up the stairs, his eyes taking in the antiquity of the house.

  “How long you lived here?” he asked.

  Susie didn’t have an answer for that question, so she just ignored it.

  She stopped with him at Billy’s door. “You can just go in,” she instructed.

  He nodded and reached for the door. Susie stopped him for a second. “Before you do, though, sir; there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “All righty then,” the man said, smiling patiently. He liked children. Susie could tell.

  “My brother had an accident,” Susie explained. “His face is…”

  She searched for the words. They never came easily on this topic. “Well, it’s not easy to look at him. I just thought it was something you should know.”

  The man nodded, and looked hesitantly at the door. “Okay,” he said. He made a fist to knock.

  “Just go in,” Susie said, walking away toward her bedroom. “He knows you’re here.”

  The man nodded again, preparing himself for a sight. He opened the door uneasily and walked inside.

  Susie went to her room and waited by her suitcase.

  ***

  The room was dark and cold. Paul Jackson peered around. This wasn’t a bedroom. It was a home office or some type of study.

  “Hello?” Paul said to the darkness. He felt alone.

  Bookshelves lined the walls, and he saw a fortune in antique books.

  The only light in the room came from a desk with a weak lamp glowing on it. There were files stacked there. Medical records, maybe. He wasn’t sure. Glancing at the door he had entered, he edged over to the desk and stared down at a file.

  The top one was labeled MONROE, WILLIAM in its indentation. Still waiting on his host to show, Paul slowly and gently opened the folder. He had left his reading glasses in the car, but a few highlighted words jumped out at him. Those words were paranoia and dementia. Restoration of higher facilities with ominous effects on subject’s compunction was a sentence circled heavily in ink.

  Paul closed it, wishing it had been written more plainly. He was still fairly drunk, but he figured that these files were research for a book. This looked like the kind of room to stretch your imagination in. Maybe his invisible host was a writer. Paul wondered about the subject of that file; who this William Monroe was. Paranoia and dementia were words that were given to the unbalanced in description. But whether the words in the file colored a harmless eccentric or drew a serial killer in vivid detail was unknown to him. It could go either way, really. God damn shrinks, he suddenly thought; so fucking anxious to make us all into monsters.

  He wondered if these files were the makings for a true crime story. If it was, he’d give it a gander, if the library owned it, and if it didn’t speak above him.

  As his eyes adjusted, he saw heads, staring back at him. His heart raced for a second, but then on closer and darkly fascinated inspection, he realized what he was actually looking at; these were only masks, draped on wig heads. There were a dozen or more, lined on the top of the bookcases. There was a green alien, Santa, a bunny mask, an evil witch complete with wart and pointed hat. They were all over the room, and the faces stared at him as he stood at the desk. It was a creep fest, to be sure, and Paul finally stopped looking at them.

  He remembered what the little girl had told him about her brother, and he understood the reason for the masks better.

  Paul glanced to his left and noticed some kind of board on the wall. He tilted the adjustable desk lamp toward it. It was a dry erase board. There were numbers scrawled in equations there. And there were words, mostly what looked like scribble. But he could make out one. Revivification; a word written neatly and largely which was underlined in red. It was a word he should have known, had definitely heard before, but the booze was making it hard for him to process it.

  “Revivification,” he whispered the word, trying to bring its definition to the front of his mind.

  “To impart new energy, life or spirit to” a voice spoke from the darkness, seeing Paul’s dilemma.

  Paul jumped, and looked further into the black room, spotting a figure in a rocking chair near the window. He didn’t know how he had missed it before.

  “Pardon?” was all Paul could manage, trying not to show how badly the man had startled him.

  “The definition of revivification; to impart new energy, life or spirit to,” the voice continued. “It was a word I used in my former work.”

  Paul could hear an education in the voice, and it sounded like an expensive one.

  Paul nodded quietly. The little girl’s brother clung to the darkness like one of those cloaked interviewees on a news program. The man was motionless. He made no effort to stand and greet Paul like a gentleman. He was just a dark shadow, sitting still in a rocking chair, haunting the corner he sat in.

  “Sorry for snooping. I didn’t think anyone was in here,” Paul explained, as if it were acceptable an act with no witnesses. “I’m Paul Jackson. I found the bad side of a ditch, out there. To be honest, I have had a few drinks and I’d like to keep Johnny Law out of this. Could I use your phone? My cell is dead. A buddy of mine has a tow truck.”

  “No phone,” the shadow replied.

  It was odd, this man and little girl living so far out in the sticks; especially without a phone. But maybe complete solitude was best for an ugly one like that.

  Paul tried another route out of this eerie home. “Well, do you have a car, mister…”

  There was an uncomfortable stretch of silence. The reply finally came. “William Monroe. And no, I don’t have a car.”

  Paul’s eye went back to the file on the desk, and he felt even more embarrassed for having looked at it and he was worried, now, too. But then he chastised himself. A lot of people had problems, and this man had been dealt a pretty shitty hand by life. Looking like that, who wouldn’t be affected in the head? Paul’s options were thin, right now. He was in the middle of nowhere, and he was drunk. The man was well-spoken, and if it hadn’t have been for the files, which Paul had no right reading, and the masks, Paul wouldn’t have questioned his safety for a second.

  So Paul decided to trust in where he was and who he was with. It would all look prettier in the light of day. Well, maybe not the man’s face. It was fixed to the shadows for good reason, he was sure.

  “So, how can I be of service, Mr. Jackson?”

  The only people who ever called Paul Mr. Jackson were cops and bill collectors. He knew he should have insisted on being called Paul, but he liked Mr. Jackson coming from this man. The ceremony of it made him feel safer, for some reason. Paul let it stand and returned the favor.

  “Mr. Monroe, I hate to impose. But I am a little banged up and a little more drunk. Could I put you out for a place to sleep tonight? I’d be glad to pay for the trouble.”

  The shadow motioned to a chair near Paul. He took it.

  “A Monroe doesn’t charge for hospitality, Mr. Jackson. You are welcome, here, this night.”

  “Much obliged,” Paul said, sinking into the comfortable chair.

  “What do you do for a living, Mr. Jackson?”

  “Mechanic,” Paul replied. He glanced to the board. “And what is it that you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Well, before my accident, I was employed by a small but ambitious company. I worked on alternate energy sources.”

  “What, like for a power plant or something?” Paul guessed.

  “No,” Mr. Monroe chuckled. “I worked in R&D. Research and development. And that word you pointed out up there was the entire basis of my life’s research.”

  “Revivification,” Paul repeated, without tripping on it at all. He was proud of himself.

  “Yes. Energy never dies, Mr. Jackson. It just changes into something new. My task was to find a w
ay to capture that new incarnation of energy; a thing that was as elusive as the human soul. That was the basic premise of my research, but it was more complicated than that. I had made strides. But then, of course, I had the accident.”

  Paul nodded solemnly. This subject felt like a busy street neither should play on right now, so he changed it.

  “Your little sister is an angel,” he said, trying to travel up the man’s good side before he asked for a little whiskey to keep his buzz going.

  “She’s the little locket I wear around my neck,” Mr. Monroe said, softly. “She’s the face I put on the world.”

  Paul nodded, trying to look like he understood, but he didn’t really.

  “Do I make you uncomfortable, Mr. Jackson? Should I put on a mask?”

  “No, please,” Paul said, smiling and shrugging. “I’m fine. You should be comfortable in your house.”