Sketched

by E. M. Townsend

  Piper felt shock flip across her vision like the wings of some huge bird. Her empty stomach clenched, unable to bring anything up but bile and panic.

  Mrs. Stone was in a pile on the floor. Her naked torso formed the base of the careful pyramid, a perfect cross-section of her midriff exposing her spinal column and organs, glossy in the bright lights. On top of her torso, Kingston had stacked her pelvis, followed by her skull. Her badly highlighted blond hair was pink with blood and it spilled down the sides of Kingston’s careful construction like a Mayan sacrifice.

  The metallic tang of blood was unbearable. It coated the concrete where the remains were piled like a butcher’s display. It was the richest and most intense shade of red Piper had ever seen.

  She gagged again, feeling her legs go weak beneath her.

  “Oh no, no, no, little birdie. No passing out. Not again. Come on now.”

  There was a sudden heat in the side of her head combined with a loud ringing. Kingston had slammed the handle of the knife into her temple in an attempt to steady her. It worked. Her head cleared as the pain receded and she felt her legs steady beneath her.

  “See? Not so bad. Sometimes a good beating is all you need. First Commandment in the Entler Family Child Rearing Bible. Just ask my mother.”

  Behind them, Jennifer screamed against her bonds again. Piper could hear the heavy chair rattling against the floor as she struggled.

  “Oh, never mind that one,” he whispered in her ear. “She does that every time mother gets mentioned. Some people.” His hands still on her shoulders he turned her to face him again. “I am just so pleased you flew in my window.” He smiled. “It is just nagging me, however, trying to figure out where I know you from. I’ve seen you before, I know it.”

  “I’ve seen you.” Piper was surprised at the sound of her own voice. Somehow, despite the panic that clawed at every corner of her body to get out, her voice was calm and even. “I’ve seen you for quite some time.”

  Kingston looked confused.

  “How’s that?”

  “You killed a girl named Megan, five years ago. I don’t even know how many more before then. Twenty-four? But you’ve started again, haven’t you? And I’ve seen all of them too. I saw the boy, Kingston. I saw every one of them. Then I saw you. I know how you took these women. I even know how your mother locked you up in this room.” Piper looked over at the faceless mannequins, each stylized blank face pointed in their direction.

  Kingston was suddenly very pale. All the joviality had left his face instantly, leaving behind the drawn, starving face of a predator. Piper watched as the whites in his eyes began to disappear, his pupils widening outward like gathering cloud bank.

  “You don’t know shit,” he said. Even his voice had changed. No longer melodious, it carried a bass line of trembling madness almost identical to the sound of his mother’s voice from behind the locked door in her vision.

  “I know what she did to you. I know how much that night frightened you. How young you were.”

  His eyes were almost entirely black now. He was within inches of her, the boiling colorless tar in his sockets whirling over her face.

  “And I know you. Yes, I remember now. Speaking of mothers. You look exactly like her.”

  Piper’s heart burst in her chest. Her ears began to ring as if he’d hit her again.

  “What, what are you talking about?”

  He took the hand still holding the knife from her shoulder and raised the tip to her cheek. Jennifer screamed again behind them, the chair thumping relentlessly with her efforts.

  “She was one of my first. Pretty, just like you. Small and well-formed. But a slut. A horrible waste. Your mother was a whore, did you know that? Mother and I picked her up from outside that god-awful bar she worked at when her shift was up. It was one of Mother’s finest moments. She offered a good amount of money, so if that gives you any comfort your mother didn’t do it for free.”

  A deep shaking began in Piper’s core. She struggled against it, but it was too strong.

  “Didn’t do what?”

  “Mother, in an unparalleled piece of acting, said her son wanted to lose his virginity. Your mother, humanitarian that she was, was more than happy to hop in the car and go for a little ride.” There was a sudden spark of pain as the knife dug into the flesh of Piper’s cheek. She bit the inside of her mouth to stop from crying out, feeling the tears now falling from her eyes mixing in with the sudden torrent of blood running from her face to her neck.

  “Needless to say, I learned a lot from her. Sexual of course, but mostly just basic anatomy.”

  The shaking had increased, Piper could feel it in every inch of her body, a tremendous earthquake of disbelief and rage.

  “Actually, that’s not the only time.” Kingston was following the blood that streamed from under her eye to where it stained her jacket and t-shirt. The whites had still not returned to his eyes, but they glowed anyway - menacing and inhuman. “You hunted us down, didn’t you? That’s right. This is the second time our paths have crossed. Serendipity is a funny thing, isn’t it? I wonder if you remember. I’m shocked as hell you survived it, actually. Mama put a bullet right in that pretty little head of yours.” The knife was back at her face again. He pushed the tip against her temple where her pulse thumped furiously. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Is it still in there? Tell me it’s still in there. I can’t wait to get it out again.”

  Something broke inside of her. She could almost hear the crash as her helpless shivering shattered and transformed into a sudden, fierce rage. She heard a scream come from her throat and then Kingston was falling backwards, his precious knife clattering onto the floor. Her foot still in midair where she had kicked him in the groin, the skeletal man stumbled backward doubled over.

  Without hesitation, Piper threw herself at him again. Numb to the pain in her wrist, she gripped the back of his head and brought her knee to his face with all of her strength. There was a crunching noise that she felt against her skin more than heard and he fell backwards again and onto the floor. His body, curled up against the pain, rolled into one of the floodlights which wobbled for a few seconds and then crashed to the floor.

  The light shone upwards and onto the withered, dead face of Brynn Entler.

  Piper stumbled backwards, almost blind as memories roared out of the long-shut door suddenly unlocked in her head. The dead woman stared upwards with unseeing eyes long ago gone milky in their sockets. Her teeth, perfect rows like her son, were almost exposed to the root, locked into gums that were rapidly rotting in the skull. Stacked in the dead woman’s lap were Mrs. Stone’s arms and legs. Perfectly sliced, bloody replicas of the mannequin limbs that surrounded them, they were bundled securely in the dead woman’s arms like a gruesome bouquet.

  She had been there. Just as Kingston said. She had helped and it had been her face that she had seen before the darkness. Her finger had pulled the trigger that lodged the bullet in her brain.

  The shaking had returned and she felt her knees begin to buckle. If it wasn’t for Jennifer’s persistent thumping behind her, Piper might have collapsed, too exhausted by revelation to continue.

  Glancing at Kingston where he lay in a pile, Piper quickly picked up his knife where he had dropped it. She was on her knees at Jennifer’s side in an instant, sawing frantically at the layers of duct tape around her wrists. Gasping, Piper hacked at the tape while Jennifer pulled. She’d hurt Kingston, but not enough to keep him down for very long.

  There was an audible pop and Jennifer’s right hand was free. She immediately began to scrape at the tape around her mouth. Piper was moving on to the other hand when the teenager began to scream again. Before she had time to turn around, Piper felt Kingston’s powerful hands around her throat as once more her body flew backwards.

  For a second she was floating, flying through the middle of Kingston’s surreal suburban set up. The next moment there was more pain as she crashed into the ground, her hip and ribs ignitin
g as they stuck the concrete. Her breath knocked out of her, she scrambled uselessly against the sticky floor where he had thrown her. She couldn’t get a foothold, Mrs. Stone’s bright red blood coating her legs and face as she rolled helplessly.

  “YOU ARE DISAPPOINTING ME, YOU STUPID LITTLE BITCH!” Kingston roared. She looked up to see him advancing on her, every muscle and every vein in his starved body bulging out with rage.

  He was on her then, both knees on either side of her hips, crouching over her like a golem. His hands were at her throat again, blood from his broken nose dripping into her face and eyes. She tried to breathe but her ribs cracked and wrapped her lungs in a tight band of agony.

  “Perfect,” he shuddered as he lay his whole body on top of hers. He was supporting his weight with his hands on her neck, his legs rigid against hers. “More perfect than Mrs. Stone, more perfect than that stupid kid, more perfect than Miss. Piggy back there. My little mannequin, constructed of all the best parts from all the worst people.” He spat blood as he spoke, his fingers gradually tightening around her neck. “Until you do it, until you kill, you just don’t understand. You can’t. And once you start, once you make that first cut, it doesn’t stop.” Was he crying? Her vision starting to blur at the edges, his horrific, gory face inches from hers, she could see the black was receding in his eyes. There were tears, slipping out of the corners and melting into the seeping filth the covered the rest of him. “And you get so lonely. So angry, so very sick and so lonely. The cycle won’t stop.” Weeping, he began to squeeze harder. Piper felt her eyes begin to roll back up in her head, her body beneath him twitching as she fought for breath. Hot drops pattered onto her face. He was all she could see, speckling her face with his blood and tears as his fingers crushed her windpipe.

  Her mind was fading.

  This was how she would die.

  She felt lights being calmly turned out in her brain. Memories were packed up in boxes neatly. Desks were being emptied and doors locked. Her body had stopped struggling.

  She saw Adam. She saw Harrison. Her mother. Face after face, passing in front of the darkness that had taken over her vision. It was warm. Finally, the water was warm.

  Oxygen poured into her lungs suddenly, her ribs burning as her body took over. She heard herself gasping but something else was even louder. The girl was screaming. The other girl. Only this wasn’t the hysterical broken sob from before. There was a ferocity to it that was only matched by her own body’s sudden desperation for life.

  Piper’s eyes flew open as a violent coughing fit ran through her. She rolled to her side in an attempt to sit up. A few feet from her, Jennifer was crouched over Kingston, her face contorted. The duct tape still hanging from her ankles and wrists, she was plunging his knife into his body with furious rapidity. She was a fearsome blur, mangling Kingston’s already limp body with every continual stroke downward.

  Still coughing, Piper watched as the teenager tossed the knife to the side. Jennifer scrambled off Kingston’s mangled corpse and was making her way toward her, her ragged hair plastered against her face with tears and gore.

  “There are sirens,” she said, her voice trembling. “We’ve got to get downstairs. We’ve got to tell them where we are. Come on.”

  Piper tried to stand but her body collapsed again, unable and unwilling to move. Jennifer hooked her strong arms under Piper and with only the slightest grunt, had her up and on her feet. Piper cried out as her ribs pressed against the girl. Her head swirled, unconsciousness threatening to take her again.

  Jennifer began dragging her away from the lights and through the blank-faced crowd. She knocked the mannequins down as she went, her teeth locked ferociously.

  “You’ve got to tell me how to get out of here,” she said in Piper’s ear. Tears made her voice ragged. “You’ve got to stay with me. Just stay with me. Stay, please.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  * * *

  She was following the little boy. One sock lower than the other, legs as knobby and thin as a bird’s, he was walking so quickly she almost lost him at every turn. When he disappeared from her sight, just the flash of the sole of his buster browns to give her any indication of his direction, her heart would speed up in her chest. She had to follow him. Losing him was not an option.

  She ran her hand along the splintered wood of the corridor, feeling the different temperatures of the walls and the rooms beyond like skin. Was this Entler department store? The boy in front of her turned his head and smiled mischievously. There was a rim of chocolate around his lips and she could see in the half-light streaming in from the slats in the walls that his hands were filled with candy wrappers. He was still smiling at her - a familiar, insincere grin that made something curl in her stomach - a snake ready to strike. He dropped the packages to the floor and sped up.

  Piper tried to follow him but something was rustling under her feet like leaves. It wrapped around her feet and ankles, seeming to get deeper the more she followed the boy through the maze. She felt revulsion sweeping through her. In the back of her mind she remembered something - green shag carpeting gone red with blood and winding around her feet the same way.

  Disgusted, she looked down and found she was now up over her knees in discarded junk food wrappers. Gasping for breath from the effort of moving, she stopped where light shone through a series of holes in the wall. This wasn’t Entler’s, it couldn’t be. There was a closeness to it, a sense of secret shame that made it seem more like a bunker than a world-class luxury department store.

  Piper leaned forward, shutting one eye so she could see through the hole. She was peeking into a woman’s bedroom. Crowded with dark, expensive furniture and practically wrapped in expensive fabrics it looked like something from a museum. She was almost surprised when she didn’t see a velvet cord separating it from a pack of mystified tourists.

  Someone had positioned these holes for a front row seat to someone’s most intimate moments. Piper felt shame creeping up like a blush and she turned away.

  The boy was standing in front of her. Only he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was older, a teenager now at least, his body emaciated and crooked from abuse. The eyes that stared at her now were filled with a shame that her own burning cheeks echoed.

  He turned away from her and was seemingly instantly gone again. Piper cried out after him, begging him to slow down but he was gone. She struggled through the wrappers, adopting the wobbling stance of someone trying to maneuver through snow. Her heart thumping still, she turned the corner and caught the adolescent’s shirt sleeve as he turned another corner.

  It was darker now. The walls seemed closer together and there was a strange keening sound coming from behind the walls. Piper stopped walking, hoping to make out the noise without the loud rustling of the wrappers getting in the way.

  It was weeping, more than one person, keening softly in a chorus of loss. Men, women, children, their cries rose up and down like waves together, muffled from behind the walls.

  She had heard this before. The same choir of sorrow had filled the kitchen when she had first seen the missing boy. The same choir had exploded from the ever widening black of her mother’s mouth.

  Barely able to see now, she turned yet another bend and stopped. The adolescent was fussing with a large lock which secured the only door in the hallway, his blond hair dirty and lifeless before his eyes. For a moment, she thought he was crying as well. It even crossed her mind that the chorus had been coming from him. However, when he raised his head to look at her, she saw that he wasn’t. He was chuckling.

  Piper watched, up to her waist in his discarded candy wrappers and the boy opened the door and slipped in. When the door opened, she could hear the chorus of misery pouring out and then dulling again as it shut.

  Her bare arms freezing, Piper moved to the door. She pushed away wrappers until she found the doorknob. He’d left it unlocked. Taking a deep breath, she turned the knob and stepped inside.

  A man, thinner than she thought poss
ible, was crouched in the middle of the room with his back to her. A single bulb hung overhead, shining down onto every vertebrae and rib that strained against his skin. Ripples of nausea began at his hips, his body moving forward in waves as he vomited violently. Piper covered her mouth as the smell hit her, looking with horror at the countless jars that filled the room. Each jar was sealed and stacked onto another. Each jar was filled with the chunky, off colored mess similar to the one the man was currently expelling.

  The vomiting ceased. Paralyzed where she stood, she watched the man sweep his hair from his face and sit back on his heels. Although she couldn’t see, she could hear the metallic whirr as he screwed another cap on another full bottle.