by Ronald Malfi
“No, sir—your name,” said the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Ted Genarro. I’ve got the address, if you could send a car by—”
“Do you have any reason to believe your wife is in any type of danger, sir?”
Go on. Tell her you got a vibe, tapped into some bad juju. I’m sure cops hear that sort of thing all the time.
“Fuck,” he blurted, then killed the call.
She was freezing, her teeth knocking together in her skull by the time she reached the greenhouse. Great swirling puddles expanded along the dirt path. At one point, lightning struck a nearby tree and sent a branch roughly the width of a telephone pole plummeting to the earth. Glimpsed through the treetops, the sky itself had deepened to the color of blackboard slate.
The knife quivered in her hand as she approached the greenhouse. The canvas rippled in the strong wind while rivulets of rainwater cascaded down the creases. There was no sign of Abigail, and the canvas covering the greenhouse didn’t look as if it had been disturbed, but there were also plenty of places to hide. The tree with FUCK carved onto its trunk clawed at the gunmetal sky with barren, skeletal limbs. The branch Sadie had toppled from all those years ago still extended out over the roof of the greenhouse, its bark the color of marrow.
She approached the front side of the greenhouse. Wind whipped at the canvas covering, making it bulge and ripple in places. She peeled back one of the canvas flaps to expose the blackened glass door beneath. The rope that had held the door shut—the rope she had untied on her previous jaunt out here—was still gone, though it was no longer on the ground where she had left it. She managed to work some fingers between the door and the frame, and pulled. The door squalled open about five or six inches. Blackness seasoned with the heady aroma of rotting vegetation stood just beyond the doorway. She switched the knife to her weak hand, flicked on the flashlight, and stepped inside.
It was moist and humid, like a rainforest. Had the sheet of canvas not covered the structure, she still did not believe much light would have been able to penetrate the blackened, moss-caked windows. Jumbled shapes resolved themselves out of the gloom, vaguely plantlike. The air wasn’t fetid as much as it was merely earthy—an orchestra of organic perfumes.
As the flashlight played across the remains of her father’s greenhouse, Laurie realized that she was looking at a man-made structure that had wholly and unwaveringly been usurped by Mother Nature. After Sadie’s death, her father had shut down the greenhouse and, to the best of her knowledge, had never returned to it. What plants he’d kept inside hadn’t died; on the contrary, their roots had burst through their terracotta pots and the corrugated tin flooring in search of soil and water . . . and had found it. The interior of the greenhouse had become a swampy black jungle, the air so fragrant with pheromones that it was difficult to breathe. Water dripped from perhaps a hundred places, tapping against leaves and draining into puddles on the floor. Large flies curtained the air. She took a step forward and her foot sank down into an inch or so of putrid black bile.
A shape stood partially hidden behind a curtain of dense foliage. Laurie flicked the flashlight over it. The checkerboard dress looked incongruous, even with its mud-colored blood soaking through the fabric. The girl wearing it was no longer Abigail Evans. It was Sadie Russ. Lacerations streamed red across her otherwise cadaver-white face. The darkened knots of Sadie’s nipples were visible beneath the sodden fabric of the dress. Her hair was a wet, twisted tangle that framed her face. Only her eyes looked alive—piercing, lucid, lighter in color than Laurie had remembered.
She found she was no longer afraid.
“Why did you come back?”
Sadie’s lips peeled back into a hideous clownlike smile. “To take you back with me,” she said. It was Sadie’s voice, but it was still somehow Abigail’s voice, too—two little girls speaking simultaneously from the same mouth.
“Why?”
That grotesque smile did not falter. “Find the circle.”
In response, Laurie tightened her grip on the knife.
Sadie laughed. It was an adult man’s laugh now. “You can’t kill me. I’m already dead,” she said.
“I won’t go with you.”
“Then I’ll take the other one,” Sadie said. “I’ll take Susan. If I can’t have you, I’ll have her. Let me have her. I’ll break her neck and make a wish out of her. I’ll throw her down there in that dark hole with all your father’s girls. It’ll be the best wish I’ve ever made. Eeny, meeny, miney—”
“Why are you doing this?” she sobbed. The knife trembled in her hand.
“Because I’m the Vengeance. I’m the Hateful Beast.” Sadie extended a pale white arm ribboned with deep cuts and pointed to a spot on the floor, perhaps a foot or two in front of Laurie.
Laurie redirected the flashlight to the spot Sadie had pointed out. The floor was a squishy cushion of mud networked with plant roots. With her sneaker, she cleared an arc through the mud to reveal the corrugated tin floor beneath.
“The circle,” Sadie hissed.
Indeed, there was a small circular grate covering a drain, perhaps just slightly bigger in diameter than a softball, set into the floor. It reminded her of the drains in the locker-room shower stalls where Coach Linda had made all the girls take showers after gym class back in high school. Two flathead screws were bolted into the grate. Trembling, Laurie sank to her knees. With her thumbnail, she dug crud out of the groove in the head of each screw. Using the blade of the knife, the flatheads unscrewed willingly enough. The grate itself gave more of a protest. She wedged the blade of the knife around the edge of the grate until she was finally able to pop it off.
She looked down the drain but saw nothing but darkness. She thought of those pictures Susan had drawn and stuck to the refrigerator: They hadn’t been pictures of the well after all, but of this drainpipe. She could hear water running below and, even as she stared at it, rainwater spilled down into its mouth. Then she remembered the flashlight. She directed the beam down into the hole . . . and saw the box.
It was a rusted tin piece of garbage that, at one time, might have been a cigarette case. Someone—her father, most likely—had wedged it halfway down the throat of the drain, to the part where the pipe narrowed and prevented it from falling all the way down. Laurie retrieved it, the casing scabrous with rust. There was a small release button on one side of the metal box. To cut her flesh on it would be to welcome a whole host of infections into her bloodstream, so she was cautious when she pushed it. The box sprung open.
There was a grimy plastic bag inside. It looked like a Ziploc bag. There was something inside, though the bag was too grimy and foggy with age for her to clearly make out what it was. She opened the bag and shook the item out into her hand. It turned out to be several items, although they were apparently part of a set. Old Polaroid photographs.
It took her several seconds to realize what she was looking at. But by the time she turned to the fourth photo in the stack, she knew. The variations of the flesh tones . . . the crease that could be the bend of an elbow or a knee or something else . . . the places exposed that should have never, ever been exposed, not on a child, a little girl. She didn’t know who the girl—the victim—was until she saw the fearful, blank-eyed face appear in one of the photos. Then, in another, she could clearly make out Sadie’s profile. Potting soil beneath the fingernails, Myles Brashear’s big hand covered Sadie’s mouth in yet another photograph. Touched her buttocks in another photo. Touched her in worse places in yet another....
Unable to look at the rest, she dropped the stack of photos to the floor. She tried to stand, but found that she couldn’t. Her face burned and it was becoming difficult to breathe. She realized she had been crying.
When she turned to Sadie, she expected to find that the girl had vanished. But she was still there, having in fact taken a step closer to Laurie while she had been going through the photographs. The girl’s bare feet were black with mud. There was an abse
nce of expression on her face.
“I had no idea he did those horrible things to you. You weren’t evil. An evil man did evil things to you, but you weren’t evil. You just needed someone to help you.”
“He did it right in here, in this place.” Sadie’s voice was flat, unemotional.
“Sadie, had I known, I would have helped you. I would have.”
“You knew.”
“Honey, no—how could I know such a thing?”
“Because I told you.”
“I just thought you were a bully. I just thought you . . . for some reason, that you’d changed. . . .”
“I told you what he was doing to me. You called me a liar. We climbed up the tree so I could show you where he did it to me. Right in here. Right in here.”
“No, no—you climbed the tree. I watched you.”
“You didn’t want me to tell on him,” Sadie said. “You thought the police would take you away from your family so you didn’t want me to tell on him. He kept doing it and you didn’t want me to tell.”
Laurie tried to speak but couldn’t. Suddenly, a part of her had returned to that afternoon, watching Sadie climb the tree, her cheap black shoes scrabbling for purchase on the low-hanging branches. Had she gone up, too?
“You didn’t want me to tell,” Sadie droned on, “and you got mad at me. You said I was making it up. You got very mad, Laurie.”
Had she gone up? Had they both been on the branch that day? Insanely, she thought of that inspirational poster again, the one with the kitten dangling from the branch with the caption that read HANG IN THERE!
“You got mad,” Sadie said. “You—”
“No!” Laurie shouted. She dropped the flashlight and clamped her hands to her ears. “No! Stop it!”
Had she gone up there and gotten mad?
“—pushed me,” finished Sadie.
Laurie screamed until her throat ruptured. In her mind’s eye, she could see Sadie losing her balance, swinging down one side of the limb, her hands laced together around the limb . . . then snapping apart as she dropped through the roof of the greenhouse. She could see it, just as she had seen it a hundred times before in her nightmares . . . only this time, her perspective had changed. The angle was different. This time, she watched Sadie Russ fall to her death while she sat up in the tree. She watched Sadie from above.
Weeping, Laurie collapsed to the floor. Only vaguely was she aware of Sadie’s dirty bare feet shuffling toward her.
“So now I’ve come back for you.”
“I won’t go,” Laurie sobbed into the dirt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Then I will throw Susan down the well and wish you dead.”
“Please—”
“Eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Who’s it going to be?”
Laurie propped herself up. Her whole body hitched with sobs. As she stared at Sadie, the little girl’s wounds began suppurating. Blood spilled from the gashes in her throat while great red magnolias bloomed beneath her filthy checkerboard dress. For the first time, she could see the jagged geometry of broken glass jutting from the girl’s ghost-white flesh.
“I’ve been following you forever,” Sadie said. “I’m always just off to the side, watching you. You saw me that day in the car.” Sadie’s lips stretched into a grimace. “You couldn’t handle it so your mind shut down. It was fun for a while—I like games—but now I’m tired of it. So if you won’t do what I say, I will play with Susan. We’ll play hard, Laurie. I’ll haunt her and drive her mad. I’ll do things to her. Don’t you remember the terrible things I can do?”
Laurie sobbed.
“I can get at her any time I want. You know that’s true. There’s only one way to protect her. Kill yourself.”
“Please . . .”
“It’s you or your daughter,” Sadie said.
“Okay,” she moaned. “Okay—me. I’ll pay for it. Please—leave my daughter alone.”
“Kill yourself and I will,” said Sadie.
Her vision bleary, she felt around for the knife.
“No,” Sadie barked. She extracted a triangular wedge of broken glass from one of her wounds, and extended it toward Laurie. “Use this. The same glass that cut me.”
The glass was weightless in her hand. She managed to come to a kneeling position once again. When she looked at the glass, a part of her recoiled at how dirty it was . . . and then she laughed at the absurdity of such a thought.
“Cut,” said Sadie Russ.
Laurie cut.
Ted had to smash a window to get in the house. No one had answered when he knocked on the door. He went around to the side of the house, but the door there was locked, too. He picked up a large stone from the garden and was about to send it hurling through the bay windows when he thought he heard Susan’s voice screaming for him. He looked around and couldn’t see her. The storm was playing tricks with his head. Then he sent the stone sailing.
“Laurie? Susan?” His voice echoed through the kitchen and out into the parlor. The house was dark and silent.
He raced out into the front hall and paused again, this time certain he had heard Susan screaming for him.
Upstairs, he realized.
He took the stairs two at a time, then froze at the top of them. The bedroom doors all stood open . . . yet Susan, whose screams he could still hear, sounded impossibly far away. Then his eyes fell on the door to the belvedere. It was closed and locked with the padlock.
“I’m here, Susan! I’m here!”
He rammed his shoulder against the door four times before the frame split. He kicked it the rest of the way off its hinges just as Susan came streaming down a set of narrow stairs. She dove into his arms, sobbing hysterically.
“Okay, okay,” he said, smoothing her hair and kissing her hot cheeks. “Calm down. It’s okay.”
She shrieked, “Mommy!”
“Where is she? Where’s Mommy?”
“She went into the woods! I saw her! She went into—” She buried her face against him.
Ted scooped her up and carried her downstairs. He set her down in the kitchen.
“Daddy, no—”
“Call nine-one-one, pumpkin. Can you do that?” He touched the side of her face.
“Where—”
“I’m going to get your mom.”
Susan’s chest hitched. Before he could leave, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. He kissed the side of her face, then reluctantly broke the embrace.
“Do it now,” he told her. “Do it now, Susan.”
He didn’t have the key to unlock the side door, so he climbed back out the window. He hadn’t realized he’d cut himself until he was jogging down the wooded path and saw that the front of his shirt was soaked in blood. A sharp pain radiated from his left side.
When he reached the clearing, he saw the door of the greenhouse standing open. He rushed inside and was quickly attracted to a dull cone of light issuing from the floor. It was a flashlight. A second later, he saw Laurie. She was sprawled out seemingly dead on the floor surrounded by a black jungle of dripping, stinking plants. Both her wrists had been cut open and she lay there with the bloodied, jagged piece of glass pressed to her throat.
Ted rushed to her side, shoving the broken shard of glass away. He listened to her chest and felt for a pulse. Counted. For a minute, he couldn’t differentiate his heartbeat from hers. But then he could. She was still alive.
He gathered her up in his arms and ran back to the house.
Chapter 32
When Ted came back from the bathroom, Detective Freeling was seated in one of the molded plastic chairs in the waiting room of the hospital. Ted didn’t recognize him at first. Freeling spotted him and rose quickly. They were in the middle of shaking hands before Ted recognized him.
“I’m sorry to hear about this,” Detective Freeling said. He looked haggard and deflated, though Ted was fairly certain he looked even worse. “Will she be all right?”
“She�
�s stable. The doctors said she passed out after doing her wrists, but that she didn’t lose too much blood.”
“Thankfully.”
“Had she not passed out and got to her throat . . .” He didn’t complete the thought.
“How about you? You holding up okay?”
“Sure.”
“And . . . Susan, was it?”
“She’s fine. She’s with the neighbors. I didn’t want her to see her mother like this.”
All pertinent questions dispatched, Detective Freeling looked suddenly at a loss for words. He sawed an index finger back and forth beneath his lower lip while his eyes darted fervently around the hospital waiting room.
“They’ve been keeping her pretty sedated,” Ted said, offering the man a lifeline. “I haven’t actually spoken to her yet.”
“I see.”
“I can’t imagine what . . . what state she’ll be in when she comes around. I’m almost afraid for her to wake up.”
Detective Freeling put a hand on his shoulder. It was a firm grip and a genuine gesture, but there was little comfort in it.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said the detective. “Was there anything you needed? Anything I can do?”
“No. I’ve got it all taken care of.”
Detective Freeling nodded. His hand slipped off Ted’s shoulder and sought solace in the pocket of his trousers. The detective looked like he wanted to say something more, but in the end, he settled for a meager little smile that made him look no older than a frat boy. When he left, he did so silently.
The man who woke him up had stale breath and large gray eyes behind thick lenses. He wore a white lab coat.
“She’s awake, Mr. Genarro.”
They had her hooked up to machines through a series of tubes and brightly colored wires. Electronics beeped and pulsed on the rack beside her bed. She was propped up on several pillows, her body shrunken beneath the white cloth gown she wore. Her complexion was ashen and her eyes looked too big for her face. She stared despondently at him as he came into the room. Both her wrists were heavily bandaged.