Housebroken

by The Behrg

  “I like this guy already,” Joje said. “What do we need to do?”

  “Send a fax.”

  Joje picked up a small shard of the crystal globe, barely recognizable. He turned it over in his hand. “I’d have no idea who you’re sending it to.”

  “Neither would I,” Blake said. “That’s just the way it works.”

  Blake could see Joje’s mind tearing the idea apart. “Joje, I will do anything to keep my family alive, and this is the only way I can think to keep those files from JT’s hands.”

  “There are other ways to destroy files than over the Internet,” Joje said.

  “Not at three locations. Say you blow up one. The cops will be all over Symbio so fast we’d never reach the parking lot of the others. This is the best I’ve got. It’s all I’ve got.”

  The fax had just gone through when Drew broke into the room, double doors splitting apart and banging against either wall.

  “Adam’s gone.”

  The front yard was empty, the only motion on the street from a few errant seagulls circling overhead. In the rear of the house, a discarded shirt, still inside out, lay on the patio, the only sign Adam had been there.

  He did it.

  A quiet calm filled Blake as he watched the waves tumble in below the edge of their backyard. That feeling, that things could only get worse, was a sailboat set to sea, so small he could barely make it out. Adam was safe. The rest, well, it no longer mattered.

  Joje ordered Blake back inside. He carried a chair from the kitchen, placing it next to the bound doctor, telling Blake to sit. Dr. Cheverou’s hand had turned a blistering purple, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead onto the fresh duct tape covering his mouth.

  “Where is he?” Joje asked.

  “How the hell should I know? I was unconscious,” Blake said.

  “You’re the one who said he could go without me,” Drew quipped, wanting to avoid whatever outburst was about to happen.

  “So where would he go?” Joje asked.

  “The police?” Blake said.

  “No. He’s having too much fun for that.” The certainty in Joje’s words was frightening. He pushed aside one of the metal racks and pressed his hand to Jenna’s face. Then slapped her.

  Jenna opened her eyes wide, the memory of her whereabouts seeming to slowly sink back in. Blake felt his heart racing. He also found himself unable to lift a finger to stop him.

  “Adam’s gone,” Joje said. “Did he tell you where he was going? Did he say anything?”

  Jenna arched her back, repositioning her body on the couch without moving her legs. After a long moment she responded. “He said good-bye.”

  She looked at Blake with a heaviness he hadn’t seen in years. Suddenly he wasn’t so certain about Adam’s escape.

  “I haven’t given him enough attention. I’ve been so preoccupied,” Joje said. The sincerity and hurt on his face was at odds with everything Blake thought he had known about Joje. “Will you help me look for him?” he asked.

  “He’s my son,” Blake said.

  “Dwew, I, uh . . . I’m gonna have to leave you, but I’ll need the gun. Don’t yet trust Bwakey. Will you be okay?”

  Drew glanced between his two hostages, an old man with a shattered hand, gagged and tied to a chair, and a crippled woman without the ability to even stand on her own. “Wait here,” he said, disappearing down the hall.

  Joje began to pace. “Does he surf?”

  Blake shook his head. Not a lot of surfing instructors in West Virginia.

  “He asked if he could go for a swim,” Joje continued, his mind keeping pace with his feet. “Bwake, you were out. He wouldn’t have known if you were coming back . . . Jenna immobile . . . it’s the first time he’s been separated from Dwew . . .”

  A loud scraping sound echoed from the hall, preceding Drew’s arrival, the sound of a metal cabinet being dragged across the floor. Blake flinched, the grinding noise reminding him of a dentist’s drill. Drew finally appeared, the noise coming to a screeching halt. He lifted the object triumphantly in the air.

  It wasn’t nearly as heavy as it had sounded, the metal grinding against wood surprisingly deceptive. In his hands Drew held the katana that had been mounted in the guest room. The Japanese sword. The scabbard’s end was tipped in metal, decorative red and gold lines running down its length. Like the gouged line now running down the grain of the floor to his hall, Blake imagined.

  Awkwardly hefting the sheath in the crook of his arm, Drew slid the sword out with his unbandaged right hand. The blade was two and a half feet long and shone like liquid, a long groove running along the upper end of both sides, what Blake had heard referred to as a “blood groove.” Their decorator may have gotten most things wrong, but this blade was without doubt authentic.

  The sword swooshed through the air, the sharp whine like three whistles simultaneously blowing. “Who needs a gun?” Drew asked.

  Joje only smiled.

  6

  Blake drove slowly, riding his brakes as they followed the curve of Vanilla Banks Road toward its eventual dead end. He had only driven past their house the first time they had come to the Cliffs, when it was still one of thirty or so houses they had been looking at. How any house goes from one of thirty to “the one” was still a mystery to him.

  The road sank into shadows, the sky at its tipping point, night winning the siege against day. The last of the sun’s rays swabbed at the clouds, pinks and oranges fading into coarser replications only hinting of their former beauty.

  “We may need to go door-to-door,” Joje said between yelling Adam’s name. With his lisp it almost sounded like he wanted Blake to dance do-si-do. The top of the convertible was down. Blake wondered if there was anyone on the street to even hear them.

  They passed a modern behemoth of a house, its tetragonal center feeding off into castled pillars, at least three stories high. Like lighthouses. The roundabout driveway behind its elaborate gate was empty, not a single light on in the house.

  Adam wouldn’t hole up in an abandoned house as empty as his own. With no sirens in the distance or helicopters swirling overhead, Blake was resigned to agree with Joje that his son hadn’t gone to the cops. So where the hell would he have gone?

  The paved street dead-ended into a spectacular rock formation, a natural jutting of black stone sticking from the ground as if the gods had hurled down spears that had petrified over the ages. Wisps of sand blew and circled across their tops. Beyond, a gloomy blanket of ocean stretched endlessly, the rotation of waves crashing forward, then drawing back.

  Forward and back. Forward and back. An eternity of marching in the same place with only the guise of progress to keep you from stopping.

  Blake put the car in park and turned the engine off.

  Adam said he was going for a swim.

  As the colors in the sky bled out their final dribbles, Blake realized how close he was to losing his son for good.

  Forward and back. Forward and back.

  He hoped he was wrong, but in the mental state his son had left in, he couldn’t imagine any other outcome. Not for a forlorn teenager whose family had just been ripped away in a sweeping moment.

  At the cliff’s edge they peered down at the waves crashing against the base. The noise of their breaking was formidable, white froth flying into the air, mist on their faces despite the distance. There would have been a beach there just two hours ago—a small one, granted, but wide enough to trod across for a boy with nowhere to go. Boys with nowhere to go rarely required wide paths.

  The cliff curved around a bend moving inland. The dirt at Blake’s feet suddenly crumbled beneath him, a stone dislodging and tumbling down. He took a step back, his foot catching on a rock and sending him reeling forward—his arms flailed. He was going to fall . . .

  Joje reached out, grabbing ahold of him by the shoulder. That was all it took. Blake’s sense of vertigo passed, and he stepped safely back.

  “This way,” he said.


  They followed the curve of the cliff side, leaving the illustrious lights of civilization behind. Not a building or home could have been built along these rocky steps, the ground jutting at odd angles and broken boulders. Periodically they would glance down over the edge. Adam wasn’t below.

  The cliffs became overgrown with trees and vegetation, beginning their ascent much higher than the twenty or thirty feet above the water they now stood at. In the distance they appeared to rise sixty, seventy feet into the air. The roads beyond those mountains would begin to curve upward into the hills, carrying their passengers over into the Valley.

  The sky had grown increasingly dark, the sun immersed in a baptism that set the water at the horizon on fire. Without thinking, Blake began to unbutton his shirt.

  “What are you doing?” Joje asked.

  “He’s down there.”

  “Where? I can’t see him.”

  “Neither can I, but I know he’s there. He needs my help.” Blake peeled back his shirt, a sudden gust of wind surprisingly cold. It was easy to forget just how cool the temperatures could drop along the coast, even in the middle of summer.

  “I can’t let you do this,” Joje said.

  Blake handed Joje his shirt, kicking off his shoes and removing his socks.

  “If I fall . . .” he broke off, unable to finish his thoughts. Joje wouldn’t get help. He couldn’t. Not without getting himself caught. “I won’t fall.”

  Joje looked out over the edge, squinting into the distance.

  Blake forced from his mind the image of tackling Joje, both of them plummeting to the rock strewn beach below. “You said you never had a father? Well, this is what a father does. Descends into the darkness to save his son even when he can’t see him. Because he knows he’s there.”

  And Blake did know. He could feel it. And time was running out.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Joje said. “He has no reason to go down there. How would he get back up?”

  “I don’t think he was planning on coming back up.”

  Understanding stole over Joje’s face. “Has he tried something like this before?”

  “Once,” Blake said. “It’s been a few years.”

  “I’ll follow, from above.”

  Blake knew he wouldn’t be able to. Joje may think he could, and would for a time, but Blake’s guess was that Adam had passed far beyond where the cliff walls rose. He wished he had grabbed the flashlight from the trunk of his car, but Tom Jones’s bulbous corpse stood watch, guarding the flashlight and jumper cables from beyond the grave.

  Blake crouched, studying the cliff he intended to scale. This spot was as good as any. The outcroppings and jutting rocks made for plenty of handholds. As long as they didn’t give out or crumble beneath his weight. He gripped one of the sharp rocks at the cliff’s edge and swung his body out and over, finding, with a few misplaced steps of dirt tumbling loose beneath him, footholds where he could rest his weight. Or at least part of it.

  He began his descent.

  7

  The rippled strokes of paint on the ceiling stirred like clouds in the air, disconnected lines forming scenes, people and creatures constantly shifting, deconstructing. A woman hanging from a noose, blood seeping from her eyes and forming a pool, a sea where a child was drowning, then sinking, then decomposing, specs of flesh floating back to the surface on bubbles that became smoke leaping from a burning house, tiny devils watching it burn, circling, chanting, transforming into a whirlpool that became a dragon spewing flames that became a baby placing a shotgun to its mouth . . . The images revolved like the outer doors of a hotel, its lobby inventing new horrors with every turn.

  The noise of running water in the downstairs bathroom suddenly shut off. Jenna felt her body tense. It wasn’t the sink that had been running, it was the tub, a nightmare that had leapt from the ceiling, becoming reality.

  Blake had abandoned her. Had left without a second glance. And the spider that had been biding its time was now preparing its lair for matters far worse than death.

  She caught the eyes of the doctor seated on the hard wooden chair across from her. She had never seen a less sympathetic stare. A few final drips plunked from the bathroom then Drew entered, the long sword in his hands unsheathed.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Help us! Help me!”

  He approached, his thick lips curling upward, then he slapped her so hard her head rolled completely to the other side, staring into the cushions. He held his bandaged hand close to him, and she hoped it had hurt him more than it had her.

  She felt the needles in her arm and neck pull at her skin, a burning sensation, then a tearing as they ripped free, dangling from the metal racks. Drew rolled the racks back toward the broken television, Jenna watching the blood coalesce in the crook of her arm.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Drew said. “Just giving you a bath.”

  His bulge was back. And throbbing. He placed the sword against the love seat, then lifted Jenna, throwing her over his shoulder like a child’s toy. Lightning pounded through her legs carrying all the way to her lungs where that energy was released in an electric cry.

  It was several minutes before her breathing returned to normal. Drew set her on the closed toilet seat. Jenna arched her back to take as much pressure from her legs as possible. The bathroom mirror was still fogged from the recent steam.

  “Do you need help undressing?” Drew asked.

  “You can’t do this—”

  “I’m helping you,” Drew said. “So you don’t break a rule.”

  “You can’t—I don’t think you can put burns like this in water!”

  “You can. The soaking will help.”

  “You don’t know that!” Jenna cried. “What if, what if it . . .” Staring down at the grotesquery that had become her legs she felt a tightening in her chest. This wasn’t happening. “We need to wait!”

  Drew eyed her hungrily. “We’re not waiting.”

  “The doctor—ask him, he’ll know! I’ll do what you say, I promise, just—make sure it’s not going to kill me?”

  He stepped in front of the bath, staring down at the water, both glass partitions slid to one side. Deb had been right, that beveled glass looked ridiculous, though the thought was equally flippant.

  “At least bring my pills?” She hated the defeat in her voice. “To help with the pain?”

  Drew’s face was unresponsive. Jenna wasn’t sure if he had heard her. She was just about to speak again when he moved toward the bathroom door, his foot bumping into her outstretched legs. She swallowed the scream breaking at the surface, her entire body convulsing.

  “Your shirt better be off by the time I’m back.” Drew’s version of an apology.

  Leaning her head against the wall, she did her best to focus on her breathing. Maybe Drew would bring the whole bottle and she could end this before he had time to realize what she had done. The black currents of those pills beckoned.

  She sat upright, staring at the open door within her grasp. Before she could change her mind, she flung it shut. The door slid into the doorjamb and back out a quarter of an inch, not completely closed. Gripping the towel rack against the wall, one hand propped on the toilet seat, she shoved her body forward. Her knees buckled, bombs exploding, as she collapsed into the door, rolling to the ground with limbs beneath her that no longer worked.

  The door clicked closed.

  She heard Drew in the family room running toward her. Squinting through the tears, her fingers searched for the button that would lock the door. She found it, pushing it in just as Drew’s weight slammed against the other side. The handle shook, the door rattling in its frame as he shouldered his weight against it.

  “Open the door, you cunt!” Drew yelled.

  Jenna let her head fall back against the wall, reveling in the peace and quiet, Drew’s threats and curses shouted at someone else, someone far away.

  His foot crashed against the other side of the door, the lower half moving an i
nch outward then falling back in place. It wouldn’t hold forever. If only she were in her bathroom upstairs or even the guest, cabinets filled with junk—dryers, curlers, scissors—anything she could get her hands on as some kind of weapon. This bathroom had only a sink that rose from the ground like a thin vase, flowering at the top. No cupboards, no accessories, just a hollow aluminum rack holding toilet paper and a liquid soap dispenser at the sink.

  As she lay on the floor looking at the other objects in the room—carpeted mats, towels hanging from the walls—she realized there might be something she could use. The painting on the wall was a Kazimir Malevich. She had always loved abstract art; something about it appealed to her sense of finding order in chaos or chaos in order, she was never sure which. She didn’t know the name of this particular piece but remembered buying it at auction for over a hundred thousand.

  And here I have it hanging on my bathroom wall, she thought.

  Something heavy struck the door handle on the other side, a loud clang emanating through the wall. “When I get in there . . .”—clang—“you’re going to wish . . .”—clang—“you had died in that fire!” Another loud clash.

  She knew what she had to do. She lifted her arms above her, fingers barely reaching the edge of the framed painting. She pushed. The frame barely budged. Of course Debbie’s team would have hung it with more than a loose nail. The door shuddered next to her. She was running out of time.

  And then she saw it. So simple.

  She wriggled her body over to reach the aluminum rack holding the toilet paper, emptying the rolls onto the floor. She looked up at the painting. Definitely chaos in order.

  The aluminum rack crashed against the frame, glass shattering despite its rounded tip. Shards rained down around her, gathering in her hair, on her clothes. She grabbed a long, jagged piece the size of her fist and held it in her hand, turning her body to rest her head against the tub. Now all she had to do was wait.