The Cellar

by Peter Fugazzotto

  I eased the trapdoor up a bit more. I gulped the air greedily. I winced. My body was still so tight, the muscles cramped. Changing positions slightly allowed the blood to flow back to forgotten body parts but with it came the tingling of pins and needles as my limbs awakened from my false death.

  I had been nearly buried alive. I shivered at the thought of the trapdoor being shut again. The stifling air. The impenetrable darkness.

  I would not allow myself to be put in there again.

  This was it. My chance to escape. Find help for the others.

  I turned on all fours, the trap door riding on my back. I felt as if my spine had been pocked with a hammer. The pain would pass. I just needed to get out and moving.

  I placed one hand on the floor and then the other, and I was just about to crawl out of the pit, when the hook came crashing down.

  I saw it out of the corner of my eye, dull metal glinting against the dirty yellow light. A sharp hook flew at me. I lifted one hand to protect my head.

  The hook whooshed past and hit the floor with a splintered thud.

  But before I could turn, before I could lift myself into a sprint, the pain came, sharp pain, fire blossoming in my hand. I turned and stared in horror. The hook had missed my head and pierced clean through my left hand. I let out of lowing cry and grabbed at it with right hand.

  Before I could reach it, the hook and my hand was jerked upward by the thick rope it was attached to. Like a bull led by its nose, I came along with the hook, pain pulling me along.

  I was yanked so hard that I spun around only to be met with a metal-gloved fist cracking me flat to the ground.

  My mouth filled with coppery warm blood. I choked and spit. My tongue found loose teeth. While I was still trying to orient myself, the hook again was pulled so hard that I was dragged to my knees.

  The Sandman held the other end end of the rope in one hand. He was naked, his belly, cock, and thighs covered in sticky blood. He wore a plated metal glove like a knight of old might wear. Over his face, he wore a mask, a strange plastic thing, a chubby freckled girl with red pigtails, Pippy Longstocking or something.

  He jerked the rope and I tumbled, the pain driving me forward. I felt as if my hand were tearing in half. I planted my feet on the kitchen floor, screaming, but my feet slid along on the grime. I grabbed at the kitchen table but it only sharpened the pain in my hooked hand. I could not hold on for more than a second.

  I grabbed the frame of the door. The rope almost tore out of the Sandman's grip. I grabbed the thick rope with my other hand and fought for control, relieving the pain, and trying to buy the time so I could extract the hook from my hand.

  The Sandman wheeled about quickly. Suddenly I realized how big he was, how much he towered over me, like one of those strange giants in magazines.

  He let go of the rope. I laughed. He struck me again with his gloved fist. I dropped to the floor.

  The ceiling rippled. I smelled moldy bread. Cold metal touched my skin. I heard the tearing of my clothes. I tried to pull my hands back but my arms were extended pushing out at the air. The room rolled. That mask, bloodshot eyes hiding in the dark holes.

  My hands were free. The hook removed. I still had no control of my body. I floated just outside of my body. Blood pulsed in small trickles down my bare arms.

  The ceiling changed. I glimpsed the newspaper clippings.

  I heard the sound of my back sliding across the floor and even though control of my arms came back to me, and I tried to grab the legs of tables, the doorway, I was weak, a horrible burning pain seizing my feet.

  I stared down my body, naked, pale, barbed wire wrapped around both of my ankles, pulled taut by the Sandman's gloved hand. I reached out, tried to scream, and then he disappeared down the steps into the cellar, and my head hit the back of the steps so hard that I returned to blackness.

  54

  "Skip, Skip, wake up."

  I woke to the world upside down, and pain, horrible pain, in my feet.

  "Skip?"

  I turned my head. The blood had pooled to my head from being hung upside down. My face felt bloated. It was so hard to open my eyes. I recognized the sodden floors, the broken concrete walls, the ceiling lights hanging from wooden beams, the musky odor of mold. We were in the cellar. The dank dungeon beneath the Sandman's house where we had found Tug.

  Jay crouched naked against the wall, and a metal shackle circled his neck, with a rusted iron chain draping to the ground. The left side of his head was swollen, his hair matted with blood, and from the angle I was at it looked like he did not have his ear. His hands were bound behind his back.

  "What the... Oh my god." My words deteriorated into a coughing fit. Saliva and blood stream from my lips in a long sticky string.

  "I thought you were dead. He dragged you down here. You weren't moving. He hung you up. Like a slab of meat. You still weren't moving."

  "Are you okay?" I asked.

  He shook his head. He turned so that I could see his hands. His palms pressed together and a metal bolt had been driven through the center of his hands, nuts on either side.

  I fought back my emotions but a whimpering slipped from my lips. "Oh my god. This is a nightmare."

  "He's going to kill us," said Jay. He blinked hard. No tears fell from his eyes.

  "Where's Tug? Lipsky?"

  "The other side of the room," he said pointing with his chin.

  I peered through teary eyes. Tug was where I had last seen him, a broken body festering in sodden rags. He lifted his bandaged hand to me and mumbled through his broken teeth and swollen lip. "Welcome to hell, my friend. I was hoping you were dead."

  "Where's Lipsky?"

  Tug shook his head. "Son of a bitch took him."

  "We're going to die," moaned Jay.

  "Shut up," snapped Tug. He tried to pick himself up, to gather his legs beneath him, but he crumpled back to the ground, a shuddering sigh passing through his lips. He fought to form his words. "We're not dead yet. As long as I still breathe..."

  "Why is he doing this?" I asked.

  Jay burst out in laughter. "No reason to ask why any more. No reason at all."

  "We're going to kill him," muttered Tug. "Pay back earns more points. Should've just killed me. He's going to learn the hard way."

  "You're a stupid ox," said Jay. "We're all dead. How the hell are we going to get out of this?"

  "As long as we're not dead, we're still alive."

  "Fortune cookie bull."

  I was tired. My body ached. My face felt as if it were going to burst. I wanted nothing more than to slip back into the darkness, close my eyes, and either wake up from this nightmare or never wake up again. Either would be fine with me.

  I was drifting, out of consciousness, when Lipsky screamed. "No, no, no!" The words eroded into an unearthly yowling, the sound of a cat being torn in two. And I thought it would end quickly. I imagined another thud and silence.

  But Lipsky kept screaming and the screaming got worse and worse. A terrified high pitch shrieking. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. The screams penetrated my flesh, like metal claws gripping my bones, and it was all I could do not to join in the screaming.

  "Kill him," said Tug. "We're going to kill him."

  55

  The rattle of a chain woke me from some dark dream state.

  I had drifted into some place of nightmares where I saw my life as if through a blackened and twisted lens. I saw myself in the courtroom, my clients distorted into monsters with giant heads and hands, tongues that rolled out of their mouths to the floor, flies rising around them like halos. I crawled through my home flooded with a stream of piss and feces. Liz naked, flesh sagging, hair thin and gray, hurled empty wine bottles at me. Each one hit, balls of light and pain. Bridget screamed, tied onto the kitchen counter, a line of shambling men, pants off lining up behind her, rubbing their cocks.

  The chains rattling spun me into another nightmare.

  Sharp pain seated like
needles behind my eyes, screws turned into my skull. My tongue and lips had swollen and I struggled to draw in adequate breath. To be honest, in that moment, hanging upside down, metal barbs wrapped around my feet, I hoped it was the Sandman coming for me, coming to finally end all of this.

  A silhouette crawled through the doorway, and then another walked behind it holding a chain like a leash.

  I squinted through the dim light. A naked Lipsky crawled on his hands and knees, and behind him was Amanda, clothed in nothing but blood.

  Lipsky collapsed to the ground. She tugged at the chain. "Come on," she said. "He's done with you. For now. You can rest."

  My friend lifted himself back to all fours, tottered forward, and finally reached a spot by the door. The whole time he hung his head, unwilling to look up at us. He was a mess. A rusted metal wire had been twined around his body, so tight that the flesh of his thin body rose up in furrows. The metal bit through his skin and blood and pus seeped out.

  Amanda hoisted the chain and padlocked it to a metal bolt in the wall.

  She was turning to leave when I called her name. She paused in the door, looking out into the darkness of the room beyond, and then quickly crossed the floor to where I was. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I have to do what he says. He will let me go if I do. He promised."

  "He's lying to you," I said. "He's lying to you and he's going to kill you. Why would he ever let you go after all you've seen?"

  "He promised. I need to go now."

  I grabbed her ankle. "You know the truth, Amanda. You know what's going to happen. You and your friends are going to die. We're all going to die."

  "No, no." She tried to tear her ankle free but I clamped on hard, with all my remaining strength.

  "He's going to cut you up. He's going to suck your eyes out of our your head. He's going to cut off your fingers one by one. You'll end up in his little jars."

  "I need to go." She kicked her leg free.

  "A key. Get us a key so we can get out. Give us that chance."

  She stopped in the doorway, glancing between the darkness and me. Finally her eyes fixated on me. "The keys. He wears them on a chain around his neck."

  She shook her head and vanished into the shadows.

  "She'll get us the key," I muttered.

  "She'll get us shit," said Jay. "She's with him. His accomplice."

  "Lipsky," moaned Tug from his pile of rags. "Oh, god, what has he done to you?"

  I looked in the direction of Lipsky. He leaned against the moldy wall, his head lifted to reveal the horror. Thick black thread pierced his eyelids and lips, sewn through his skin, sealing his eyes and mouth shut. He swung his head back and forth and lifted his hands. They were tightly balled, wrapped in a web of rusted metal that gloved his hands. His body shook uncontrollably, almost as if from a fit of laughter.

  56

  In the years since this living nightmare, I've thought about the masks he wore. Each one different. Each one a surprise.

  The sack over his face. The Pippi Longstocking mask. The plague mask. The blood painting his face beneath all the other masks.

  I've tried to think about each of those masks and what it might have meant, whether he was trying on different personas with each mask to touch into a different part of his psyche.

  They each could have meant something but what did I really know. I could make up what I thought each of the masks represented. The rough hemp sack representing a blank face, maybe even innocence. Or maybe it hearkened to some portion of his childhood spent on a farm. Or maybe it was just what he found in his garage.

  And the Pippi Longstocking mask. Maybe that represented memories from childhood, watching movies and laughing, times precious but forgotten. Or maybe it evoked the memory of sisters or his mother, and somehow by wearing that mask he channeled them. But why would he channel his sister to chop limbs and drag us into his dungeon?

  The plague mask was easier. A black bird representing death. That was obvious. It was no ode to mother nature and the forest surrounding his hellhole. No, it was death, and he embodied it.

  The blood on his face was not a real mask. It did not hide his features.

  But I've thought about the Sandman. If I saw him back in the town, or even in the courthouse, would I have picked him out based on the way that he looked like a killer? Or would he have just been another redneck sitting at the bar, or a police officer leading a cuffed prisoner towards his courtroom?

  Would I have been able to see beneath his face, his real mask, to who he truly was?

  We all wear masks.

  Hiding away our inner feelings, our dark dreams, our petty desires.

  It's what lurks beneath our smiles, our words, our everyday faces, that is what we truly are.

  And no one sees that.

  We barely see that ourselves, trying to become the mask we project: the successful lawyer, the happily married man, the loving father.

  We wear these masks because it makes life easier.

  Imagine the horror if we lived our lives without our masks. Imagine what hell our worlds would be if we allowed the demons beneath our skin to come out.

  Imagine the Sandman.

  57

  He came for me next.

  I somehow knew that he would. It was my turn.

  I knew it was coming.

  It was just a question of when.

  I had half expected some rattling of chains or the scraping a blade against concrete, something to foretell his arrival. Instead, I looked up from my mad reverie and he loomed in the doorway, suddenly as if he had materialized out of the darkness, little pieces of him coalescing. And I wondered if that's what it was. Did he even have form? Was he the stuff of nightmares taking shape from motes of dust and light? Or worse did he materialize from the deepest recesses of our own minds where we hid away vile thoughts and dark memories?

  He stood in the doorway staring at me, from behind a different mask. This was a plague doctor's mask, a leathery mask in the shape of a crow's head with its long beak. I could not see his eyes. No light reflected in them. The holes in the mask were an unfathomable darkness. He could have been looking anywhere really, but I felt his eyes focused on me.

  He wore a dark robe over his shoulders, but the front hung open and he was naked beneath it. On his bare chest, I saw the glint of metal, heard the rattle, knew where the keys lay: our chance for freedom.

  In his hand, he held my wood axe.

  Jay and Lipsky retreated further against the wall, trying to make themselves smaller, hoping that the Sandman would not notice them. A bubbling whimper escaped Lipsky's mouth. How could he have even seen him with his eyelids sewn shut? It must have been the sound of his steps and his cavernous breath that told Lipsky that death walked into that room again.

  Tug crawled along the ground towards the Sandman, quickly reaching the end of his length of chain. "Come this way, motherfucker. Come to papa."

  The Sandman paused, turning his masked head towards Tug. "All in good time, my child."

  He then faced me.

  I wanted to be a brave and strong as Tug. I wanted to lure him closer to me so I could suddenly spring into action tearing the axe from his grip and dealing him a quick blow, one that would send his head rolling into the distant shadows. Then I would toss the key to Tug and the shackles would ring against the floor and, arm in arm, we would stumble out of the cellar, pausing to spit on the corpse of the fiend, as we climbed the steps towards light.

  Instead, I hung upside down from my feet, my arms bloated, tingling, as heavy as stones on the floor. Maybe I would have somehow found the reserves to gather my energy and attack him, ripping that axe free, bringing that weapon back into my hands.

  But I never had the chance to find out. The Sandman rotated the axe in his hands and with a lunge forward he thrust the butt of the axe handle into my stomach so hard that I bent in half as all the air was forced out of me.

  Before I could regain my breath, he stepped forward, loosened the rope fr
om the wall, and dragged me down to the floor. Burning pain ripped through my feet, and I screamed. Hot blood washed over my feet. I reached for them, but I could barely move, my stomach cramped from the blow.

  I was picked up by my hair, lifted up so that my feet, my bloody feet, could not even find the ground. I threw an elbow backward, my bone hitting flesh, but it did not matter. I was being dragged out of the room, a trail of blood pouring out of my feet, marking my separation from my friends.

  Tug was at the end of his chains, hands like claws, tearing as if they could somehow close the distance and seize my ankle and pull me back. Jay was wailing, cursing and crying, calling on God to protect them, to bring down a wrath.

  The Sandman stopped at the doorway and drew me into his arms. I felt him hard behind me, and the cold metal of the keys against my back. I fought to turn, but he had sunk his arm around my neck, my throat cinched in the crook of his elbow, and he drew me in closer and closer, the beaked mask alongside my head.

  I tore my hands backwards but my fingertips only found leather. I inhaled the sweet scent of roses and something like vinegar.

  Then the world blackened. His forearm and bicep tightened across the sides of my throat, constricting, until the blood flow stopped. I grabbed at his arm. A black screen flashed across my eyes. Time slowed. I felt like I could perch in this spot forever, as if the moments stretched, and then darkness swallowed me.

  58

  I woke to a sudden gasp as I drew in a quick breath. A single yellowed bulb swayed from above, casting shadows across the mildewed ceiling and barely lighting the room. I sat in a rickety wooden chair that threatened to fall apart beneath my weight. My hands were free but a wire bit into my neck.

  Pain wracked my body. I stared down at my feet. Dirty cloth had been wrapped around both of them to slow the bleeding from the barbed wire but blood still bubbled on the surface of the cloth. I moved my toes and ankles. It was good to be free of the barbed wire.