Shallow Veins

by Brian Martinez

  Behind them three police cars speed up the driveway. It’s a relief, until Mary recognizes one as Officer Banks.

  All three cars skid to a stop. Two officers emerge and bear down on Kevin and Mary with command presence. “Are you the owners?”

  “That’s them,” Officer Banks says from behind before she can respond. On his face is a smug grin.“Is the intruder still inside the house,” he asks, but the way he says “intruder” you can hear the air quotes.

  Mary looks at Kevin for the answer. She calls his name. He looks up from his hand. Says he’s not sure.

  “Did you see him exit the house?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t think so.”

  Mary grabs his arm, trying to help her floundering husband. “He doesn’t know what he saw, he believes there was a man in the spare bedroom window as he came back from-”

  “No.” Kevin pushes her hand off. “That part I’m sure of. That part I know.” His tone is hostile, aggressive, which he realizes when he sees the hurt expression on Mary’s face. He never speaks to her this way, never touches her in anger, and she’s embarrassed to have strangers witness them interact this way let alone policemen. He tries to explain himself but only a strained sound comes from his open mouth.

  “It’s alright,” one of the officers says, “we’ll check the house, you two stay right here.” Before they leave, Kevin catches the man throw a knowing nod to Banks, who nods in return.

  They think I’m crazy, he thinks to himself. They might be right.

  **

  After the officers have cleared the house, one circling the perimeter while the other two go inside and check it top to bottom, they come back to Mary and Kevin. They pull out notepads and forms and take their official statement. The first thing Kevin asks is, "Did you check the basement?"

  "We searched the whole house, no sign of intruders, no forced entry. If there was anyone in the house he's long gone now. Usually it's junkies looking for meds. Saw you coming up the driveway and got spooked." Kevin understands what's going on here: this cop is giving him a stock speech, memorized from hundreds of other calls, recited to make victims feel safe.

  "And the spare bedroom?"

  Officer Banks sniffs, barely hiding his anger. "He just told you, we checked the whole house." Again that knowing nod to another officer. Then he turns to Mary. "I understand you're shaken up but there's no reason for concern. Is there anything else you need before we go?" Kevin knows what he means. He would punch Officer Banks in the mouth if he could.

  "No thank you, officer, you've been great." Mary leads Kevin back to the house, letting the officers wrap up.

  That night, instead of sleeping, Kevin stares at the ceiling trying not to look at the air vent on the far wall. His heart booms in his chest and his palms sweat, but he refuses to look.

  **

  In the following days Mary notices a change in Kevin. He's distant, easily startled, and he's not eating as much. Instead of finishing his dinner and looking for something to snack on, he rarely clears his plate. She knows he's losing weight when he brushes his teeth next to her and she can see his shoulder bones in the mirror. She asks him if everything is good but he brushes aside the questions with vague allusions to feeling ill. Then he says he has a lot of work to catch up on, goes into the office and shuts the door.

  Once alone, he doesn't code. He's afraid of letting his guard down, of losing himself in that place with no eyes on the sinks, no ears to the floor.

  When Mary is off at work, Kevin pours himself a glass of water, sits at the kitchen table and watches the basement door. He waits for phantom sounds and reappeared bodies. He doesn't know what else to do to ease the feeling that the moment his back is turned, horrors will be unleashed from those stairs. Felix lays at his feet, occasionally asking to be let outside, but when Kevin doesn't notice the scratching at the door the dog sometimes has accidents. He pees in the corner and whines, sorry for what he's done.

  Once, Kevin is so lost listening to the basement he forgets Felix outside for almost two hours. No matter how much he apologizes to Felix, scratching behind the dog's fuzzy ears, he hates the way it makes him feel.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Felix puts his paws up on Kevin’s knees, letting himself be pet. His fur is cold, his nose dry, but he blames nothing on Kevin. He’s just happy to be back inside with people, warm, getting scratched under his chin, tongue out, eyes squinted, and the sight is so silly after such a cruel oversight that Kevin can’t help but chuckle. “You don’t hold grudges, do you, pal?”

  He’s looking into his dog’s eyes, smiling for the first time in a week, when he hears it.

  The sound is faint at first, so much that even Felix with his sensitive hearing doesn’t seem concerned. It registers as nothing more than an electric shaver left running, sputtering through its last moments before the rechargeable battery dies. But as it continues on it gains in volume, varying in pitch and speed until it moves from something mechanical toward a surgical dampness, like a liposuction vacuum sucking up watery fat.

  Man and dog notice it at the same time, far off in the house, in a forgotten closet, an electrical outlet, maybe even on the roof, an antenna gone mad. Like the smell in the basement it’s hard to pinpoint, but unlike the smell, the sound becomes more and more obvious, coming closer, up the hallway, winds its way up like a moray eel emerging from a split in oceanic rock.

  Kevin and Felix freeze in place. They share the fear. Felix’s tiny paws, still rested on Kevin’s thigh, dig in with extended claws. A tide of dread and death washes over them and they can do nothing about it.

  The sucking and spitting and scraping comes around the corner with such physical presence it confuses both of them when their eyes find no object to tie it to. Yet there it is, the disembodied noise, approaching, encroaching, passing under them- so close, the floorboards shake beneath their feet and paws.

  They hold on tight, pressed against each other, praying for it to end, to move on and forget them, leave them alone and let them live. It whirls around them and with it the stink of decay, the faint smell from the basement but much stronger, thicker, vomit times one thousand, shit and piss and rotten breath putrefied over a million years of hate and rot. It's enough to make anyone gag, vomit, fall to the ground choking, but they wouldn't dare make themselves known. To give up their presence, to admit the sound and stink might know they're here, alive, shaking just above, would be to admit that death knows their name.

  When it finally passes, moving to the stairs and on down to the basement, Kevin and Felix are kneeling in a puddle of urine.

  **

  Mary is in a good mood. She had a good talk at work today with a patient who without realizing it had given her some great advice.

  As she was prepping the older woman for a root deepening, laying out the dentist's tools as the nitrous took effect, the woman began singing lightly to calm herself down. Mary asked her what song is was, because it sounded old, older than radio, older than recordings, and the woman smiled in that sweet, gassed up way.

  She said, "Oh, I don't remember the name, I just remember it was my husband's favorite. I sang because he liked it. Can't stand music myself, but if it made him happy that was good." A deep breath from the mask, the whooshing of the canister. Sweet air filled her lungs. "Everyone's looking for money like money makes them happy. Money, money, money. All you have is your happiness, so if it makes him happy, do it, even if you think it's silly or dumb. A woman who can't make her husband happy with a smile and a squeeze is no woman at all."

  Mary stood at the tool tray, her back to the old lady, tears pooling in her eyes.

  Home now, she parks in the driveway, stopping to collect the mail from the mailbox, something she wishes Kevin would remember to do but it's not as big a deal as she made it out to be.

  She's about to head in when she notices something.

  With the mail in hand, she walks over to the driver's side window of Kevin's car. Inside, staring forward, Kevin s
its behind the wheel. Just by his eyes, by their hollow rings, she knows her day is about to get much worse.

  Felix lays in the passenger seat, asleep.

  Mary calls Kevin's name, lightly at first, then louder, hoping not to scare him. After calling it three times she taps on the window. Instead of jumping or shouting, he turns his head to her and rolls the window down.

  "Do you need to tell me something," she asks.

  "I do." His tone is even, numb.

  "You want to come inside so we can talk?"

  He shakes his head.

  "Then tell me what you need. I can't help you unless you tell me."

  With one finger he presses the button that unlocks the passenger side door. The click wakes up Felix, and he wags his tail a bit when he sees Mary is home, but it worries her that even Felix looks spooked. She walks around the front of the car, watching Kevin the entire time, her eyes on him. Before she opens the door and gets in she lets out one, long sigh, outside, where he can't hear it. She scoops up Felix and holds him in her lap, petting him as much for her own comfort as for Felix's.

  After a few moments of silence, filled with stop-starts of talk, Kevin says, "I need your help."

  "Good. That's all I want to do. I want to help you."

  "The thing is, I don't know what kind of help I need." He stares forward, scared, embarrassed to make eye contact with her. "I don't know if I need help with something in there or something in here." He puts his finger to the side of his head. "I think it's real. Felix thinks it's real, too, which is the only reason why I haven't..."

  He trails off and Mary says, "Haven't what?"

  "Felix thinks it's real, and he's scared of it, too. He's not scared of me so that means it's not me, right?"

  "Kevin, tell me what you're talking about. It's me, you can talk to me. You're being so vague I can't follow, and it's scaring me a bit."

  "Vague." His voice is low, quiet, and it shakes with imminent tears. "I used to think vague was scary. The idea of immeasurable things was terrifying. That's why I do the work I do. But now, I think, I'm starting to think, that the more you learn the worse it gets." For the first time, he looks at her. "The devil's in the details, that's what they say, right?"

  "Kevin- what happened in the basement? What happened to you? I know you've been watching the stairs. I know you haven't been working, and I know you're barely eating, so tell me what happened in the basement that has you so freaked out. Please tell me so we can work on this together. That's what we're supposed to do, isn't it? Sickness and health? Wasn't that the deal?"

  He swallows hard, his vision clouded, his face wrinkled. He says, "This house." He says, "This house wasn't empty when we bought it."

  **

  Kevin tells her everything. He tells her about the feelings of dread, about the sounds and the smells and the attack that Felix and he experienced. He tells her who he thinks the face in the window was, how the more time passes, the more he's sure that damned plumber was staring at him that day.

  He tells her about the eye in the drain.

  Mary listens to all of it without interrupting. She lets his voice come like a broken dam, words slurred and spilled in a violent wave, the pent up energy expelled along with the tears. No matter how much she wants to tell him to stop, shut up, stop saying these things, she doesn't.

  Mary listens. At the end of it, when Kevin has said everything he needs to, and all Mary wants to do is leave and take the dog with her, get back in her car and drive to her father's house, sleep for a week, a month a year, she doesn't.

  Mary makes a choice. She chooses to believe her husband.

  "Okay," she says. "Let's go inside and look for it."

  Kevin's eyes widen, looking at her like she's the crazy one. "I'm not going back in there. Not now, not ever."

  "But it's our house."

  "I'm trying to tell you it isn't. It's that thing's house, and it can have it."

  "We can't afford to abandon it. This is everything, Kevin, this is all we have."

  "We have our lives."

  Mary nods, trying to work through the problem. "Okay, so what do we do? Do we become homeless because some...thing is in our house, or do we figure out how to get rid of it? Think about it- the police have already come out here twice and found nothing, one more time they might have us seriously evaluated. The neighbors, you've seen the way they look at us, they think we're the devil come to town and I don't know how to fix that. We can go back to the realtor and try to resell but you know how long that takes. And what do we do in the meantime, go broke staying in a motel for a year? Who else can we go to? My father-"

  "Your father hates me."

  "My father barely likes me, and I'm his only child. Maybe if I had been born with a penis we'd have a better chance, but here we are. We have no choice but to go in there and figure out what it is and how we can get rid of it."

  Kevin's hand starts to shake as he pictures going back into the house, but Mary notices and puts her hand over his to stop it.

  "You have to believe that we deserve to be happy as much as anyone else. People get bad deals all the time. This one's ours. What we're not going to do is lay down and die."

  **

  They stand at the front door, Felix between their feet. When they tried to leave him behind, safe in the car with the window down, he panicked and tried so hard to escape they were afraid he would hurt himself, so they let him come. Kevin isn't happy about it, but he does feel safer with the dog next to him.

  He says, "You know this is the part in the horror movie where you yell at the screen about how stupid the characters are."

  "This isn't a horror movie."

  "Don't be too sure.”

  She gives him an encouraging smile. "If this is a horror movie you're the hero, so you have nothing to worry about."

  "The women are usually the heroes, they're the ones who live. It's kind of a running theme."

  "Then I promise to wait at least six weeks before I remarry."

  He sighs. "You think I'm being stupid."

  "No, honey, I don't, I'm just trying to cheer you up. I'm nervous, too, you know."

  "Good." He turns the handle and opens the door.

  The house is silent. The living room and what can be seen of the hallway looks just as it did, nothing broken, no slime or debris the way Kevin's imagination would have it. Not even a single couch cushion is out of place, and rather than relaxing, Kevin finds the peace disturbing. He's always felt the only thing worse than the danger you can see is the danger you can't.

  "Looks safe," Mary says, urging him forward. She would step in first but she knows it's good for him to take the lead, overcome his fear. He looks down at Felix still sitting at their feet with no desire to go any further. The dog looks up at him as to say, What are we doing here? And Kevin looks back to say, I wish I knew.

  Kevin takes one step inside. Nothing happens. He takes another. Nothing happens again.

  "Can I join you," Mary asks. He waves her in and she steps forward, but Felix stays right where they left him. "C'mon, pal." She bends down and pats her leg but Felix cocks his head. She repeats his name a few times. Still he stays behind on the porch, turning his ears this way and that but not moving, not inching. "That's weird, he always comes when I call him," she says.

  "That was before he heard it."

  For the first time, Mary forces herself to consider the idea that Kevin might have hurt Felix, might have lashed out during an episode of delusion. But she remembers how Felix sat next to him in the car, and how he followed so closely on Kevin's heels between there and the house, as usual trailing him more so than her. She also knows how much Kevin loves that little dog, and that he would never hurt him.

  "Come on, pal," she tries again, but now Felix is inching backward with his tail tucked tight between his legs, eyes focused past Mary, past Kevin, eye-line shifting. Following. Tracking.

  Mary has the horrible realization- that Felix sees something behind them- a split-secon
d before the door slams shut, locking Felix out, and them in.

  **

  The room fills up with death-stink.

  A change in the air is what closed the door, not a hand or a foot but a shift in pressure, like a great lung dropping in the chest of the world. The oxygen becomes so thick that for Mary to move through it to be by Kevin's side is like pushing through quicksand; viscous, unseen material that pushes into the nostrils and strains the muscles.

  Kevin spins to see what scared Felix so much but finds only the wall, their framed Dali print askew as if something has brushed past and knocked it off-center.

  The sound, chopped hamburger with ground glass, stirred and building, rising up from almost nothing to the level of car crashes and meat-packing plants, comes from the kitchen, not the hallway like last time, and spirals around the two of them, pushing them together. They hold each other as they would if a tidal wave was thundering up the beach at them, left defenseless and with no choice but to cower and clutch.

  “What is this,” Mary asks over the chaos, “what's happening?”

  The fear in her voice snaps him out the trance. “I’m not staying here to find out.” He moves her out of the way and goes to one of the chairs against the wall, a heavy, ornate antique they found at a sweltering outdoor fair the year before. He grabs it up by the shoulders, getting a firm grip, lifts it from the ground and tells Mary to stand back before swinging it with all his strength to hurl it through the living room window.

  It never reaches the glass.

  Before wood can meet pane, the baseboard heating element wrenches from the wall, seemingly on its own until the true reason appears from behind: it moves like a dead snake revived with electrical current.

  It strikes impossibly fast. Catches the chair in black tendrils. Tosses it aside. The chair shatters against the wall and Kevin and Mary watch in nauseous horror as the creature, the mass of dark flesh, writhes before them, growing off-shoots the way lightning branches and fans. Pieces birth and die and reabsorb to grow again from its rotten surface, undulating in life and burial.