The Cellar

by Peter Fugazzotto

  I could barely breathe. My throat was raw and bruised, painful to swallow, and with each breath, sharp pain flowered out of my stomach where I had been struck by the axe handle.

  I could smell my own blood and the stench gathering in the back of my throat, and I gagged.

  I touched the wire around my neck trying to find out how to release myself but it looped tight into my flesh, the taut end disappearing towards the ceiling.

  I struggled to find a full breath. I felt as if an invisible hand had circled my neck and was slowly cutting off my airway. I needed air. I began to tremble uncontrollably.

  A face emerged from out of the shadows on the opposite side of the room. Another mask. It was that of a Japanese fox, painted white with pink and yellow marking around its eyes, nose, and ears. The mask floated in the darkness as if disembodied. It moved left, then right, bobbing, almost as if engaged in a dance.

  I bit my lip. I fought back the tears. I was done with all this. I was ready for it to be over. Death could not be worse than what I anticipated. I just wanted to die.

  The mask tilted left and came forward. I could see the shape of a black robe hanging around it.

  I felt as if my spirit rose outside of my body and stared down at myself, naked, bloodied and bruised, on that chair. With each throbbing beat of my heart, the masked figure stepped closer, feet scraping against concrete, the slow rasping like the skin of a snake.

  My breath burst out of my chest and I was back in my body. The masked figure stopped.

  "Do you want this dream to end?" the Sandman asked.

  I fought against the trembling of my lips. "Yes, please." I knew what he was offering me. I was ready. I had enough. "Finish this. Finish me."

  The Sandman laughed. He ran his thick fingers up my legs and over my belly, finally resting at my lips.

  "We only need one," he said. "One servant. Not two. Never two. Two is bad. One is good. She is no longer of use. We need another."

  "I don't know what you want."

  "What is it worth to you? Will you give yourself to us? The whole of yourself?" He slipped his finger between my lips.

  I spat it out and jerked my head away. "Just end this, you sick fuck!"

  The mask drifted out of the light and then reappeared again.

  "Prove you are the one."

  "What do you want?"

  He slipped away into the darkness, and I had thought that maybe he had left. But I was wrong. A moment later I heard him behind me, his breath heavy on the nape of my neck.

  Then the wire around my neck pulled taut, lifting me upwards, and I followed it to standing. A hand pressed into the small of my back pushing me forward. I walked into the deeper darkness. The cellar was musty and so thick that I thought I could strangle on it.

  I wondered if this was the end, if he was leading me into his kill chamber, if this nightmare would finally end.

  His hand slithered past my side, the touch of his fingers making my skin goose pimple. I swallowed back a scream.

  Then I heard the click of a handle and a door opened before me. It was the torture room, the one with the barber chair.

  In the chair sat Amanda, naked, wrists and ankles strapped with heavy leather. Her skin has been wiped clean of the blood, now just a map of cuts, welts, and bruises. Her body glistened, covered in a thin layer of oil or grease.

  "Prove you are the one," the Sandman said. His breath felt like fire singeing my ears. "She's seen too much. She has seen my face. Give me her eyes and I will let you go."

  "You're crazy." My knees weakened and I fell to the floor.

  "Her eyes." He laughed. "And you will be free."

  I heard the twang of the wire as he attached it to some kind of hook above. I turned to him to tell him that I could not do this but he had vanished once again into the dark corners.

  I stared at the table next to the chair. Scissors, saws, razors, a large needle with the black thread that had been used to sew Lipsky's eyes and mouth shut. The light caught on the metal, reflected, sharp and bright at my eyes, like tiny pinpricks pointed right at me, ready to pierce.

  "Amanda." My voice cracked, each syllable painful through my bruised throat.

  "I'm sorry," she said. She stretched her fingers out to touch me. But the connection was never made. I could not make myself touch her. "He promised to free me if I brought you to him. But he lied. He killed my friends. When I went to your house, he ate them. Not all of them, just bits. The juicy bits. While they were still alive."

  "Oh god, just let this end," I begged.

  "Do this for me." Amanda glanced at the instruments. "But not what he wants." She laughed beneath her breath. She opened her palm to me, quickly and just so I could see it. In her hand, she held an iron key, the key that would unlock the shackles that held my friends. "We'll not give him what he wants

  "He's going to kill us," I whispered.

  She returned the whisper. "I know. He wants more from us. It's not just the evil that he commits, but what he will make us become. He wants us to become monsters in our hearts. Then he will have won."

  I could not resist but look again at the instruments on the table. The light reflected painfully off the flat metal of the blades. In the center of the instruments a spoon with serrated edges sat on a folded cloth, a spoon just the right size to slip under an eyelid, into the orbital socket, to scoop out Amanda's eyes.

  I squeezed my fists so hard that my fingers cramped. I forced them back open, pressing them straight against my thighs, shaping the disfigurement out of them. Still they threatened to curl into claw-like hooks, the hands of a fiend.

  "You need to do what I ask," Amanda said.

  My teeth chattered. I shook my head. She was a child still. She was so young that she could have been my daughter. The thought of Bridget alone and abandoned flooded my thoughts and I wept suddenly.

  "The large blade," she whispered. I followed her gaze to the stainless steel surgical knife resting on the table. The metal was bright, shimmering, even in the dim light, as if it called out to me. "Just cut my throat. Do it quick. Before he knows. Please. Do this for me. Then take the key." She opened her palm again so I could see the dull iron key, our chance for salvation, the prize at the end of the deathly rainbow.

  I could not resist and glanced behind myself into the gloom. Layers on layers of cascading darkness. He could be standing there. He could be watching me. He could have heard every word she said.

  "He won't free you," she said. "Don't let him turn you into a monster."

  "I can't kill you." My words crumbled around me. "I'll cut the straps. I'll free us. We'll fight our way out of here. We can escape."

  "No. Quick. Kill me," she hissed. "He's right behind you."

  I seized the knife.

  "Do it."

  I pulled her hand aside and began sawing at the strap. That's when the wire tightened around my neck. I gagged. Even with no air in my lungs, I kept cutting. Amanda disintegrated into fragments and the last thing I remembered was the clattering of the knife on the floor.

  59

  I woke to a scene of horror.

  Underneath the dim light of a hanging bulb, Amanda lay strapped in the chair, her mouth bound with blood-stained cloth, and by her side stood Jay, naked and bruised, trembling, the disembodied mask of the fox floating in the shadows behind him, a harsh whisper seeping from the Sandman's lips.

  I wanted to scream but something had been stuffed in my mouth and duct tape had been wrapped around my jaw sealing my lips shut. My neck burned from where the wire had tightened and strangled me unconscious. I sat on the floor, arms bound behind me to a metal pole.

  My muffled cries caused Jay to suddenly look up. I could see him craning into the darkness trying to see who was making that noise.

  "Do you want this dream to end?" asked the Sandman.

  Jay could barely stand, the metal collar and chain weighing him down. His hands were wrapped with shiny duct tape, the metal bolt removed from them. His knees t
rembled. His legs were stained with his own shit.

  "I don't know what I want," said Jay. "I don't want to die."

  The Sandman stepped forward, running his hands over Jay's belly and chest, pulling him into an embrace from behind. Jay shuddered but then seemed to collapse back into the Sandman's arms.

  "She's seen too much. Seen the man behind the mask. Little Dorothy. And her dog, too." The Sandman slid one hand down Jay's front and grabbed his cock and balls. With his other hand, he flicked open a knife and made a quick cut on the inside of Jay's thigh. "Do what I ask and you will know pleasure not pain."

  "What do you want?"

  "She's seen too much. Her eyes. I want her eyes. Do that for me and I will let you go."

  "I can't. You can't ask me to do that."

  The Sandman shifted his grip and slashed at one of Jay's balls. "I'll cut your balls off and shove them inside of your eyes. It's either you or her."

  I screamed but all that came out was a pitiful lowing, like some animal being led to the slaughter. I pulled at my arms but the duct tape only bit in more deeply.

  Jay stared across the darkness at me. I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to see the light in my eyes, and for him to know that there was hope, that he did not have to give into the Sandman, that he did not need to follow him down that tunnel of evil.

  The Sandman released Jay, shoving him forward on his knees. "Do you want to live?"

  Jay blubbered, saliva stretching between his lips, his hands clamped over his balls trying to stop the bleeding.

  "It's you or her."

  "I can't." Jay shook his head and closed his eyes. "I can't."

  "She led you here. She was willing to let you die so that she could live. She made you walk into my trap. Without her, you would have been free. None of this ever would have happened."

  "No, no, no!"

  "You or her." The Sandman retreated into the shadows. "I won't give you another chance."

  I tried to rip free from the metal pole. I strained so hard that my shoulders cracked and the tape tore into my skin. But no matter how hard I tried I could not escape. "Jay!" My voice was a muffled moan, and this time, despite screaming as loudly as I could, he did not look into the darkness at me. He did not hear me pleading with him. He was too deep in his own thoughts, struggling with what to do, whether to save himself or damn himself. Both choices led to death.

  He tottered to his feet. He wiped at tears with the backs of his wrists. He stood there for a moment beneath the light of that single bulb and I could see that at the moment, he could go either direction. He could easily walk away.

  There was hope. We might survive all this. We might return scarred but not broken.

  He stepped forward to the chair and lay a hand on Amanda's cheek and he smiled, all the sorrow and anguish vanishing from his face.

  Behind the tape that bound my face, I smiled too. My blood-brother was going to do the right thing.

  Then he pivoted to the table and plucked the serrated spoon from the table.

  "You brought this on yourself," he said. And he dug the metal instrument deep into Amanda's face.

  60

  In the end, I was alone in that musty, blood-soaked room.

  After what Jay did to Amanda, the Sandman came out of the shadows. He gently put the eyes in a small jar, shaking it as if they would rattle for him. Then he took Jay by the hand and led him away.

  I was left alone in that room. Amanda was not there any more. Her body was. Her blood was. But she had fled. Only her dead body remained, strapped to that chair.

  I sat alone on the floor for a long time. It could have been days or hours or maybe only minutes. However much time had passed, it was as if I had traversed over a bottomless chasm. I had crossed an invisible border, and entered a sub-world, some visible level of hell.

  I was not even sure whether time was passing or it had simply stopped.

  Eventually the gentle scraping of the Sandman's feet along the ground, the spine-tingling steps, marked the passage of time.

  He unbuckled the straps that held Amanda to the chair and then rolled her to the floor. She fell hard, her fist still clenched around that key.

  Then he came for me.

  I had nothing left. In fact, I wanted him to rip my eyes from my head. I only hoped that when he did so all memories of what I had witnessed, what I had seen Jay do, would be erased from my mind.

  He cut my hands free and tried to lift to me to my feet but my knees were weak and I collapsed. So he dragged me along the ground like some discarded doll and then heaved me up into the chair. I should have fought back. My hands were free. I should have punched him, tore at his eyes, grabbed one of the murderous tools on the metal table. Instead, I lay there unmoving as he carefully stretched the straps over my wrists and ankles and secured the buckles.

  His eyes were bloodshot and wet as if he had been crying behind the mask. "You think you are better than me? Better than your friend?"

  I stared at the pale bulb hanging from the ceiling. What was the last thing that I would see? His mask? The dim light? The flash of metal?

  "We are all no different. We get ... forced into choices. At first, it is stepping into the wilderness but after a while we see that a path runs through the trees, a path created by animals, worn heavy by the feet of men, a path that will lead us through the shadows. Easier to follow that path once we are on it. So hard to step again into the uncertainty of the wilderness. Monsters hide there. Monsters of the mind. Monsters much worse than those on the path. So we make choices to do less evil."

  "You're fucking crazy."

  "Am I so different from you? I did not kill the girl. I did not lead you here. What else have you done before you even got here?"

  "Fucking crazy."

  He chuckled. "Maybe a little bit. But in a good way. A crazy teacher way. Here to provide lessons into our inner selves."

  He leaned over me, his breath, hot, stinking of rotting meat. As he bent over me, I noticed that the keys that once hung around his neck were gone.

  But before I could further reflect on that, he plucked a large scalpel from the table. He held it up towards the light, rotating it in his fingers to catch the light. "Now we are going to work on that inner self of yours. A few improvements."

  He quickly drew the blade across my chest. I bit back a scream. He picked up a small stone from the surgical table and using his thumb, inserted it inside my cut flesh. I fought back but could not stop him. Then he grabbed a large needle with black thread and began sewing the cut up with the stone inside, bulging under my skin.

  "So much work to do," he said. "So much work to improve your inner self."

  61

  I heard them. I heard their voices. I heard my friends calling out to me.

  But it was across such great distances.

  We were no longer in hell.

  We were in the mountains, or at least how the mountains should have been. Distant snow-covered peaks. A wide meadow of grasses. The bright forest. The birds sang, their song tumbling, calling and responding above the buzz of insects in the grasses. The bees floated among the bobbing flowers blossoms, bees heavy with clumps of pollen on their hind legs. I was intoxicated by the heady smell of sweet flowers mixed with the musk of the grass.

  I lay on my back, and I could feel the grass growing around me, the slithering of the blades across my skin, the roots fingering ever deeper into the ground. It was only a matter of time before the grass would grow high enough that it would wrap around me, pulling me into its embrace, and then draw me down into the cool earth, quelling the fire on my body.

  It could not come soon enough.

  "Skip! Brother, wake up."

  "He ain't ever waking."

  "What did he do to him? How could anyone do this?"

  "We're next. This ain't stopping here. Only one way it's stopping."

  "One of two ways. And I know which way I'm fighting for."

  "Let him be. Let him die. Better than what's
in store for us."

  "Skip! Skip! Wake up."

  I followed the pain out of the dream, following it like a golden thread out of the darkness, but it only led me to further darkness, a black blacker than any I had ever seen before. It led me to the cellar of the Sandman.

  Pale light seeped from the direction of the chair and the torture room. I was on my side, half my destroyed face resting on my arm, the other half burning in pain. The cold metal of a shackle wrapped around my neck. A prisoner again. I touched my chest. The stone was still in there. My body lit up randomly with pain. My feet, my face, my balls, my fingers, my thigh. It was as if the pain raced madly along a circuit running through my body. So much pain, an impossible amount of pain, and then I remember, the scalpel in Sandman's hand, the slow steady slices in my skin, and worse, things being inserted into me, then the piercing of the needle, and the pull of the thread.

  I lowed like an animal.

  Tug spoke from the shadows. "We'll get out of here, Skip. We'll get you to a doctor. We'll fix everything up."

  "We need to kill him," I said. "End him."

  "I want this to end," said Jay. "At this point, I want the nightmare to end. How's this going to end? It's not going to be good. You know that as well as I do. It's only going to end badly. We got no options left. One by one, he's going to slaughter us. One by one. Tear us apart bit by bit until there's nothing left. How many limbs can he cut off before we aren't anything anymore? How many times is he going to slice us up? At what point are we no longer ourselves?"

  "Shut up!" Tug surged against his chain. "It ain't over until it's over."

  I ran my fingers along the cut and sutures in my body. I needed to get the slivers of bone, the shards of glass, everything else that had been inserted into my body out. I would have to tear my own skin open. Otherwise I was risking the chance of infection. I fought back laughter, Did I really think that an infection was what was going to kill me?