by Scott Hale
The professor, humbled by the student’s remark, stepped aside and held the door open for her. The student, enamored of the professor’s demeanor, bowed her head and accepted the offer. For no reason in particular, Beatrice looked up and over her shoulder, back the way she’d come. She looked to her car parked in the growing shadows, to the tracks it’d left on the old, dirt road. Her eyes wandered over to the batch of crops swaying gently in the small field and the red yield cradled in their husks. She turned her attention to the trees so densely packed, to the shed she’d missed and now saw, its door hanging off its hinges, the hinges hanging off the door.
“Thank you,” Beatrice said as her hair fell across her face.
“Please,” he said, hand moving past hers, lifting and sliding the rebellious strands behind her tingling ear. “This is just what we needed.” He took her hand.
Mother fuck, Beatrice thought, don’t be that girl. Just because you want it doesn’t mean you should have it. She looked away, to the window beside her, where the egg sac had burst and a thousand skittering births were now crawling all over the dirty glass. “I…” She cringed, felt embarrassed. “I don’t think this is a good idea… whatever you… you’re… whatever you have in mind.”
“I’m sorry, Beatrice,” he said kindly. “That’s not what I had in mind.”
Frederick dropped her hand and slammed her head against the side of the doorway. Beatrice’s impact cracked the molding. Her teeth clamped down on her tongue. She stumbled and went to her knees. Mouth full of blood, she looked up at Frederick and started to cry.
With a hyena smile, Frederick crouched down and took her head in his hands. His fingers prodded the wound he’d made, eyes lighting up every time Beatrice whimpered. He admired what he’d created, and then, as though he thought he could do better, proceeded to bash her head in, until it was too slick to hold.
When Beatrice Bacchus came to, she may as well not have. Vision blurred and short of breath, she lay covered in blood, a migraine like a hailstorm pounding her gray matter. She forced herself to breathe, breaking the layer of coagulation that had sealed her lips. She felt shaky, disorientated; hungry and thirsty for anything but her own bodily fluids. The back of her head throbbed, and the pulpy contusion there spoke to her in the rapid thuds of her heart. Slowly, she touched it, to form an image in her mind of the damage done. It felt soft, swollen, not a part of her, like some parasite of pain that had decided to hitch a ride on her skull.
Whether she had a concussion or was on the brink of collapse, Beatrice was cognizant enough to remember what Ødegaard had done to her. She tried not to cry—she’d shown enough weakness already—but there they were, the tears, running down to her mouth, adding some salt to her already limited diet. At first, she blamed herself, because even without her contacts or a full-blown lobotomy, she should’ve seen it coming from a mile away. But self-loathing hadn’t done much for her in the past, so she said “Fuck that” and forced herself up, until all the nausea inside her had been replaced with hatred and rage.
“Good morning,” Ødegaard chirped from somewhere in the room.
Beatrice scooted away until she backed up against a crumbling wall. A single lightbulb dangled from the ceiling, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, as though someone had just turned it on. She followed its course, across the cement floor to the sweating walls. But if her attacker was here, he was in the dark places the light would never reach.
“Up here.”
Too much movement and she’d be out again, so she took her time acknowledging him. In the shadows above her, where the ceiling sloped several feet higher, she saw the outline of a doorway and the shape of a man looking through it. Glancing at the floor, she saw two rusty circles beside her hands, likely from the ladder he’d taken and she now needed.
“You piece of shit,” she muttered, proud of herself for being able to say anything at all.
Eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see the calmness in his face, the carefulness in his dress. She could even smell his cologne when a breeze blew through. The violence hadn’t changed him, hadn’t revealed him for what he was. He was still the same, while she would never be. Beatrice wanted to demolish him, though perhaps “demolish” was too soft a word. Slaughter, maybe. She wanted to slaughter him.
“It’s nothing against you,” he said. “I saw an opportunity and took it. You can appreciate that, can’t you?”
“People know I’m here,” she threatened. Her thoughts turned to the knife in her purse, which was probably somewhere upstairs, thrown in with the belongings of the other women he’d murdered. Her shoes and socks were missing as well. “They’ll come looking for me, you dumb mother fucker.”
He laughed. “Beatrice,” he said through a smirk, “this isn’t my first rodeo. I capture young people like yourself all the time. You wouldn’t be down here if I wasn’t any good at it.”
“There’s no wife, no kid,” she said, ignoring him. “This isn’t your house.”
“Actually, my wife is at work.” He stood up, loomed over her as though he meant to jump in and finish her off. “The house isn’t ours in the legal sense, but no one is going to kick us out anytime soon.” He bent over and pulled back on the large, metal door that sealed off the basement. “As for my kid, well, you two will meet soon enough. Make sure to make an effort. You’ll thank me later, trust me.”
Beatrice reared up, shouting, “What the hell are you—”
But he slammed the door shut, snuffing out her throaty protest. A key ring scraped against the other side of it. Several locks and deadbolts slid into place. Any hope of leaving that way was now lost.
On shaking legs and borrowed time, Beatrice rose to her feet. She stumbled, pressed her palms into the sharp shards protruding from the wall. The lightbulb had calmed since she’d been sealed in, but she’d seen enough. It wasn’t a basement but something else. The room had no function, no obvious purpose. The ceiling was an ocean of unending granite, not wooden floorboards like they ought to have been if she were truly under the house. No, this was something else, something deeper—a sub-basement or another place entirely. And why wouldn’t it be? If she should scream, no one would hear her. And if she should die… Jesus, if she should die, would anyone even find her?
This place smelled as she imagined a coffin might; a kind of damp, saccharine rot comprised of years of abandon and regret. Fresh blood trickled down her neck, down her chest, as she took her first step forward. A bitter wind blew into the room, putting the lightbulb into a hypnotic motion. Child? She continued walking, refusing to the use wall for support, because at this point, the only thing she could rely on was herself. He wants to torture me, savor this moment. Maybe it was the head wound, but when she thought this, she did so academically, as though it were happening to someone other than herself. There’s nothing down here but what he wants me to believe is down here. Her ears popped up, and with their newfound clarity, she heard water behind the walls and something else clicking its claws down subterranean haunts.
“This can’t be the only way out,” she told herself in between shallow breaths as panic set in. “And if it is, I’ll climb the fucking walls.”
Beatrice inhaled, held the musty air in her lungs and let it wilt them some. She exhaled and did this again. Slowly, like a knot untangling, she felt the tension leave her body, out the bloody hole in the back of her head. She thanked her therapist—“Fuck you, mother fucker, it doesn’t work!” she’d shouted at him—and then threw up all over her feet. As stomach acids burned her throat, her thoughts started to slow and madness, which had been waiting for its moment to strike, was tucked back into its genetic bed once more. With every exhale, she shed a bit of herself, until all that remained of Beatrice under the fluorescent light was the will to survive and the flesh and blood that would see it through.
She crouched, slid her pants down. For now, for once, her character flaws would become strengths. Too stubborn to die, too irrational to wait. If she had to kill, sh
e’d kill, and if she had dig her way out, she’d dig her way out. Of all things, Beatrice was a scavenger, and if she had to fight for the last scraps of life, then she would.
At least, these were things she tried to convince herself of as she pissed on the floor, marking the thing she was determined to own.
As the last drop hit the ground, she heard something else in the black space beyond. Breathing, rapid and raspy, somewhere nearby. Feet, bare and calloused, shuffling. Followed by hands, dragging like an ape’s, close behind. And then teeth and tongue, clicking and grinding—a siren’s song of no subtlety, a butcher’s call for the sake of brevity. The thing was coming for her, and it wanted her to know it.
Beatrice pulled up her pants and ran. There was only one entrance to this room, and she had to get out before it got in. She went beyond where the light reached and gathered herself in the darkness there. She felt the wall, felt the open air. Childhood claustrophobia had given her an acute sense of space. A hall, narrow enough for a few to pass, that’s what she was up against. She put her back to the wall, the condensation waking the dried blood on her shirt. The rocks there ground into her spine, got into the crooks of her bones.
Beatrice waited and then edged forward; paused when she heard something patter by, left to right, where the hall clearly split. Thank fucking god. Without sight, she felt distant from her body, deprived of its sensations and functions. But in some ways, she was more prepared for this moment than others may have been. She’d spent most of her life listening to others bitch and bemoan their bad choices, and then would use it to her advantage. If nothing else, she could use that same art of manipulation to her advantage here.
Make sure to make an effort, she remembered Ødegaard saying, and now she realized why: It was a game.
The thing was back. From right to left it bounded and then stopped, where the hall branched. Short strides, small sounds: It was either very small or very careful. She could hear it sniffing, sampling the coffin air for the source of the new scents. Maybe it was a child, but it was easier to assume it a monster, instead. It would be an insult to humanity to call it anything else.
“There, there,” a young boy called out. “There, there.” His voice was high, his speech mangled. He spoke in imitation, and what he was imitating was a mother comforting its child. “There, there,” Ødegaard’s spawn carried on, promising kindness before the kill.
Beatrice moved her hand down the wall, reading its bumps as the blind would braille, searching for something, a pipe perhaps, to defend herself with. One foot after the other, she closed the gap between her and the boy, trying to reach another corridor. Could he hear her heart, feel the pulsing of her blood? Could he smell the piss that’d dribbled down her leg, taste the dead skin she was chewing off her lip? The darkness gave no answers, only promises.
“There, there,” the boy rattled on. She could hear it turning in place, somehow felt its gaze tightening on the lightbulb behind her. “There, there. There—”
And then it was running.
Beatrice screamed and took off, keeping her hand to the wall. She ran down the hall, as though to meet the boy head-on. And right when they would’ve collided, the wall turned, so she did, too. She gasped as she pushed herself to the brink of collapse. Her legs wobbled, one buckling after the other, but she kept going.
Behind her, she could hear the boy giving chase, his hands and feet slapping like raw meat against the ground. Fear shook the pulpy peak on the back of her head and an avalanche of blinding terror ran down her face.
Her stomach twisted like a rag as she felt fingertips at her ankles. Oh god, oh fuck, oh god. The boy’s hot breath seeped through her jeans, and she felt his rancid spittle dotting her thighs. There was a lust in his groans, a hunger that wouldn’t be satiated through bloodshed alone. She’d experienced the feeling before, had known it herself. She needed to save her strength, because if she had to fight him off—
The boy’s fleshy arms wrapped around her and yanked. Beatrice wheezed and then brought her leg up and kicked the boy’s gut. He shrieked, released, and flew back, his bare body sliding repulsively across the floor.
The hell? Beatrice’s foot felt heavy, as though something had sloughed off the boy onto it. She picked the mush out from in between her toes, shook off the wet, towel-like thing draped over her ankle. What was this? And then she bolted, not interested enough to find out.
If there was a heaven, then it was blood red, because that was the color of the light she saw up ahead. A black rectangle with crimson highlights—a door perhaps, or a dead-end. It didn’t matter which. She barreled through it all the same.
It had been a door, and it cracked back against the wall as she flew into the room and fell to the floor. In a second she sampled the room—tiny, with heat lamps atop workbenches—and then scurried to the threshold.
“There, there.”
The boy hurried down the hall, the closer he got to the room, the more defined he became. Long arms, spidery legs; bubbled flesh spread thin, pulled tight. The boy’s face was deformed, molded into something grotesque, as though it were made of putty. And then, looking closer, she saw another face around his neck, its mouth forever fixed in its last moments of pain.
“There—”
Beatrice had seen enough. She slammed the door shut and pressed herself against it. Her sweat-stung eyes searched for a bolt, but it had long since been ripped free. On the other side, the boy screamed and threw his body against the door. Beatrice locked her legs and arms and absorbed the blows. Her head rocked back and forth with every crash, and she found herself losing time.
“There… there,” he grunted, tiring himself with the assault.
What’s that? Across the room, where the red light was deepest, she saw a small hole in the wall, a tunnel. I have to bar the door. The workbenches were near enough to grab, but only if she gave up her post. If he knew, he would’ve just come in that way. She felt something hot against her backside. Looking down, she saw a soupy puddle spreading under the door, chunks of flesh riding in on the iron tide. Now, while its weak.
She staggered to her feet and ran to the first workbench. No tools, but it was heavy enough to keep the boy out long enough for her to get away. She got around it and slid it towards the door, its metal legs rending the air with noise as they scraped against the floor. Beatrice caught the heat lamp atop it as it fell.
“Fuck. You,” she said as the boy threw his shoulder into the door and sent his arm through.
Gritting her teeth, she pressed the light to his flesh. It melted immediately, creating a web of skin between limb and lamp. He pulled back, leaving a glove of flesh on the floor. Beatrice ran for a second workbench and lodged it under the first.
She dragged herself to the hole, her eyes following the lamp cords still plugged in at the top of the wall. What the hell? Hanging from the corner, just below the ceiling, a small camera sat, recording her suffering for the pleasure of the pervert who put her here. She wanted to tear it down, tear it apart, but the boy was at the door again, and her pathetic barricade wouldn’t hold for long.
Beatrice pushed through the breach and came out in another hallway on the other side. Bright as they were, the red lights made their own impenetrable, dampening darkness. She could see a few feet in front of her, but even that crimson kindness didn’t offer much more than its blacker counterpart. Three halls shot off in wildly different directions before her. She chose the leftmost, because in the end, what did it matter? They would all send her to the same place. Most choices, in most cases, always did.
Ten seconds in and the workbenches gave. The boy, the fiend, wailed, and she could hear it tearing through the room. Three hallways and the god damn monster ended up choosing the one she now stumbled down.
She picked up the pace, smacked face-first into a wall. A sharp pain shot through her nose and she tasted blood. She felt up the wall like a high school kid with a hard-on and went to the right. Another light, red, winking from above—another
camera, more pornography. But then the red lights multiplied across her field of vision, like a thousand oozing sores. Her blood sugar was plummeting. Her body had betrayed her and would probably finish her off faster than the fiend ever could.
“There, there.”
That fucking phrase. Beatrice’s feet went out from under her as they slipped on a strip of something wet. She stumbled against the wall and then down the hall next to it. Her feet suctioned to the floor, her toes breaking up whatever filth had dried upon it. Her nose, dead as it was to the smells here, picked up something vile. A sweet odor, hot and abrasive; a combination of shit and a maggoty garbage smell. She didn’t need to be able to see to know what she was walking through.
But then the motion activated lights came on and she saw anyway.
Bodies, and the things that make them up. Hands, arms, feet, and legs; torsos, faces, muscles, and fingers. The walls were plastered, the ground covered. Skulls and bones appeared to be coming out of the floor, which at this point, she couldn’t even be sure was stone anymore. Everything looked chewed on, torn apart. This was the fiend’s kitchen, and she’d wandered right into it.
“Stop.”
Beatrice turned around and there the fiend crouched. Shocked, it took her a moment to comprehend what she was looking at. Loose flaps of dripping flesh shrouded its emaciated body. When it shifted, she saw its protruding ribcage, which had every manner of mutilation done unto it, as though it were the ceiling of some sadistic chapel. Its fingers were claws themselves, and its teeth gore-ridden stalagmites behind its sneering lips. Long ropes of pale muscle dangled from its wrist and neck, and it was only when her mind went to the darkest place possible that she realized what they were.
Umbilical cords.
The flesh fiend molested her with its infected eyes, as though deciding which parts of the meal to start with first. It slipped its hand between its legs and rubbed itself hard. With a few tugs and one spasmodic jerk, it spilt its foul, brown seed over the faces of the dead. It grunted out a laugh and then ambled forward, eager to share the last of its semen with its newfound friend.