by Adam Cesare
Out in the empty hallway, Arnold strained to listen for the girls. He could hear their voices in the cafeteria, the sounds of a struggle. If they were killed there, so be it, but if they survived and were looking to escape, they would have to exit through the basement.
And that was where he would wait for them, sifting through the junk and biding his time until he could rise up and take control.
Chapter 46
Harriet twisted and howled, her voice becoming the aural extension of the flame engulfing her shoulders like a blanket.
The old woman knew what to do, stopping, dropping, and rolling, or some amalgamation of the three, then making an attempt to pull the sweater off and failing. She pulled up the waist and was able to get half of the material off, but much of the synthetic fabric had been too saturated in ethanol gel and had already melted into her flesh in places.
It looked overwhelmingly painful, but Nikki couldn’t summon one ounce of pity, and though she wanted to take the time to watch her mother-in-law burn, she dove instead to help Sarah, her savior.
Sarah had been hit with some of the backsplash and was beating at her legs, the flames not extinguishing but instead eating at the knees of her scrub bottoms. Nikki pushed the girl to the ground and helped her strip. Sarah looked to be in pain, but she also looked as if she was embarrassed to be seen in her doodled panties.
“You’re out!” Nikki yelled, wrapping her arms around Sarah, listening to the girl’s sobs of frustration and pain, her flesh clammy and soft. Nikki could smell burning meat and hair, and the stench made her think of what Sarah had referred to as Luau Night. She had an idea and looked over to Harriet to see if the flames were spreading, if the room was burning.
As Harriet raked her nails across her flesh, scraping off more skin than Sterno, Nikki watched the molten globs sputtering and dying on the tile.
The gel left small burns here and there but the flames did not spread the way Nikki had wanted them to.
“Let’s go, come on!” Nikki said to Sarah, the girl rising to her feet, pulling the fabric of her underwear out from between her ass in a motion that was both ludicrous and refreshingly dignified.
Nikki grabbed the end of a large cook pot off a fire pit, the hot metal burning her hands, and upended its contents onto the floor and wall. Embers and smoke swirled, some bits of wood dying against the linoleum but more catching and spreading as they hit the oxygen of the room. Sarah got the idea and used her bandaged hand to pour out another can of Sterno, keeping away this time as it splashed against the surface of a table, burning grooves and running off the edge of the table and onto the molding, where the painted wood blackened underneath the invisible flames in an instant.
The clouds above their heads darkened, the streaks of fresh air that had been there a moment ago shrinking as the chemical tang of burning plastic and paint filled the air.
Taking a table leg from one of the fire pits, Nikki walked over to where Harriet lay. The woman tossed and twitched and Nikki lowered the heavy end of the club onto her ear, swatting the old woman with the wood until she rolled over onto her back. With her eyebrows and eyelashes burned away, Harriet looked even more alien.
Don and Nikki may have arrived at Mercy House with a sick woman in tow, but that woman died the exact moment she’d cut down her son, possibly before that. All that remained now was a monster, below contempt, beyond pity, the only thing sad about her was that she’d been allowed to exist in the first place.
“Good enough,” Nikki said, and caught hold of Sarah’s hand, the younger woman still tipping fires, not noticing that her bandages were smoldering until Nikki pointed it out.
Sarah rolled her hand into the fabric of her scrub top, and Nikki caught a glimpse of her modified bra. The fire on her bandages snuffed, she let her top fall back around her belly, no longer looking self-conscious but owning the bottomless look. There was a beauty to the girl now that Nikki hadn’t seen before; not a difference in her features, which had seemed so plain before, but a difference in the way the girl held herself. It wasn’t just the presence of agency or hope, Nikki had seen Sarah possess glimmers of hope and it hadn’t made her attractive, but she carried a look of satisfaction now, her brow lifted in a job well done, her jaw unfixed and no longer as severe a line as she’d been keeping it.
“Let’s get out of here,” the girl said. Nikki agreed.
—
Over the last day, Sarah had experienced true pain for the first time.
It was not while vacationing in Disneyland and stubbing her toe so badly by the hotel pool that she lost a nail. It was not breaking her arm on the swing set when she was ten. No, those were minor annoyances, made curiosities by the emergency room visits that followed. Topical anesthetics and Tylenol had dulled the pain so she could watch the doctors and nurses work.
True pain was knowing that you wouldn’t be getting any help, that you had to help yourself even when you couldn’t. By that definition, Mrs. Samson lacerating her hand and using a thumbnail to perforate her neck hadn’t been true pain.
No, true pain was killing Paulo. It was the indeterminate period when she thought it was possible that she’d be surrounded by Queen Bea’s hive forever. It was the slime ringing her thumb and forefinger as an old man forced her hand around himself.
True pain was knowing that the scar, or not even that, that the open wound would be with you until you died.
True pain was the one-in-a-thousand chance of survival, and then giving police reports and not having anyone believe what had happened there. Next to the idea of true pain, the scorched skin on her hands and legs was nothing.
True pain was a large part of why she made the decision she did, after swinging open the door to the basement and seeing Arnold Piper standing there in the half-light. She closed the door again, a child locking the monster back in the closet, at least momentarily, before checking to see if it was still there.
“You get to the window. He won’t be able to fit out. Okay?” Sarah heard herself saying, hurrying the words out. Nikki looked confused.
Sarah didn’t wait for Nikki to agree or disagree, and it wasn’t even clear that Nikki had seen Arnold to understand what Sarah was talking about.
It didn’t matter, Sarah pushed through the basement door and ran to Arnold, yelling for his attention and picking up one of the canes from the rack by the door. She let the end drag across the concrete as she approached, then swung it with all her might, low to high, a golf swing in which she hoped to clock him with the follow-through.
She hadn’t been so lucky. Arnold used his forearm to catch the blow, swiping down and away, the cane knocked out of her hands and clattering across the floor.
This close to him, all he needed to do was reach down and pluck her from the ground. Sarah twisted her head to look for Nikki. The girl had listened, that was good. Nikki had taken a longer route around, diving over some junk and sending a stack of ceramic dishes crashing to the floor as she ran for the window, parallel with Arnold and Sarah now.
Arnold dug his long fingers into the meat of Sarah’s calf and gave a frustrated yell as she looked into his dull, monstrous eyes. As he clamped a second hand on her waist, resting the weight of her body in the crook of one arm, like she was a child, she could have sworn she saw a softening of his expression. There was forlornness in that look, a grim duty that he’d already subscribed himself to but no longer believed in. He was fighting a battle he’d already lost but would still see through.
Then he lifted Sarah up by her legs and she was weightless for a brief moment, until his powerful arms straightened and she snapped like a wet towel and was driven face-first into the concrete, the true pain subsiding in an instant, blinking into oblivion.
Chapter 47
If Nikki was going to be killed by the man anyway, she was thankful that Sarah’s death had been so definitive, that the girl had died thinking that Nikki would escape, that she’d made some grand sacrifice.
Lives were narratives, most t
imes fictions in which the people were both the authors and the sole audience. She’d seen this phenomenon play out again and again as she talked to kids. Sometimes she would talk to two or three who had known one another, each kid giving his version of the same incidents and banalities, the specifics not changing but the perspective and the sympathies shifting, depending on who was doing the telling.
Whether you were a Shark or a Jet, North or South Philly, all that really mattered to you was your personal narrative, not even your friends’ or your family’s or your lawyer’s version of events, but how you perceived what you did on a daily basis, the story that you told yourself to contextualize your actions.
It was nice that Sarah had gotten to write her own ending. She had given an arc to what an hour earlier must have seemed like an endless string of misery and degradation.
It had been formless, Nikki was able to recognize that, but Sarah had died to give it some kind of shape for herself. Good for her.
Nikki’s own death, should she fail to get out through the basement window, would be one last indignity to add to the pile, like Don’s crucifixion or Dr. Dane’s vain attempt at redemption. The day’s history was full of sound and fury, and it signified that shit happened and would keep on happening as long as there were humans around to do awful shit to one another.
But still.
Still she clawed at the metal shelving unit. Still she kicked against crumpled cardboard boxes and silently pleaded with them not to cave underfoot. Still she reached for that glorious rectangle of light and begged that there were no more monsters patrolling the grounds outside, no more traps. Still that even if she did die that they would all go with her, inhaling smoke and burning alive before they could escape.
Putting both hands on Dr. Dane’s white coat still lying on the windowsill, she wasn’t the least bit concerned by the diamonds of broken glass that embedded themselves into her grasp. They weren’t going to kill her, and they could be picked out with tweezers later. Dipping her head through the window she breathed in and smiled, the smell of dirt and grass sweeter than it had ever been.
And then, like she’d expected she would, she felt the fingers wrap around her ankle.
Before she turned to see the man, she flexed her shoulders and propped her elbows against the window frame on either side of her. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting, pulling in lungfuls of fresh air.
Bending her head toward her chest, she could see his face in the slashes of sunlight.
“Why?” she asked. It was not a rhetorical question, not an existential quandary, but a real question that she needed to hear a real answer to. “Why are you doing this?”
It may have been her imagination, but the man seemed to consider this, giving no slack in his hold on her ankle, but at least not dislocating both her arms and breaking her leg by yanking her back through the window, something she knew he was capable of.
In answer, the man screamed in surprise.
No, not in answer but in pain. The stink of charred meat wafted up through the window, sucked out of the basement by a cross breeze.
Harriet growled and appeared over the man’s shoulder, her face skeletal in its burns, no more lips to cover her teeth as she dug her mouth into the man’s neck. His narrative was being given a surprise ending and his face, the disbelief written there, was the last thing Nikki saw before his hand loosened and she pulled herself, gasping for air, out onto the grass.
She had no time to rest, no assurance that Harriet was anywhere near dead. But she did not need to stop and watch the two battle, since she did not care about the closure of which one of them won.
Nikki used the stone facade of Mercy House to climb to her feet. Then she ran, faster than she ever had at the gym, faster than she ever had in college club soccer, or in high school track before that. As she ran, she dug into her pocket for the key to the rental car and hit the Unlock button before she had even rounded the side of the building. The car did not beep as she kept the button depressed, but that may not have been a feature that came standard on the rental.
She hoped that the parking lot wasn’t far, remembering back to what seemed like a century ago that they hadn’t been the ones to park the car. It had been that young man with the angry face who’d parked it. In fact, she had no idea where the lot was.
Following the gravel drive to the back of the building, she could see them, glistening in the sunlight, some silver and some black, one was bright yellow, a BMW. Oh, Dr. Dane, you douche. But then she realized something else. All of their hoods were propped open, their wiring and batteries littering the ground around them.
No car.
That was fine, Nikki thought, dropping the key to the ground and pulling an about-face,
-heel, -toe.
To her side, smoke was beginning to curl out the windows of Mercy House. Her heart sank as she watched a tall figure appear in a second-floor window, the grating missing there, the window unbarred, and nothing keeping him inside. But she was fine again as she watched the man lock eyes with her and jump forward, flying for a moment before collapsing into a broken heap as he hit the ground, no other lemming appearing to take his place. He could have climbed down the drainage pipe, but she was glad he hadn’t.
A run along the mountain roads would be a nice way to end the day, a cooldown, almost, until she could flag a car, have it pull to the shoulder and call for help.
Cooldown, she thought again and giggled, watching Mercy House recede into the distance, burning, the smoke not yet high in the sky as she ran up the long driveway.
Nikki knew she was in shock, knew she might never fully recover, but she also knew that she was free and would never again see the gothic face of Mercy House: Home for the Elderly.
She kept running and laughing until the police cruiser rounded the corner, almost colliding with her but not, because that would be too cruel an ending.
Epilogue
Lieutenant George Raines had always wanted to witness that little peckerwood Beck get his comeuppance, and with only a few weeks left on the job it had seemed like he’d never get to. So Raines contented himself with making things as hard as he could for the kid, undercutting all his decisions, leaving him to fill out all the paperwork.
Jim Beck wanted to be a boy scout, and that wasn’t what this job was about, not really. If anything, Raines was doing the kid a favor by teaching him that.
Now, hoisted up by this ghoulish fucking perp, the kid was learning that the shiniest shoes in the world, the highest scores in the academy, none of that could stop the job from tossing you a curveball that fucked up your shit for good.
Raines finished dusting himself off before looking up to see whatever commotion was going on with his partner. He’d just had a little dizzy spell there from the smoke and the excitement, that was all; he was now ready to rock, shotgun in hand.
He looked up just in time to see Beck’s unconscious body falling back onto the grass; one foot to the left and the kid would have split his head open on the concrete walkway.
Beck’s attacker had clocked him with what looked like an aluminum alloy cane, not that the huge man needed one, he seemed to be keeping his balance just fine, in his army-man getup, blood drying all over him, dribbling out of his wounded neck.
“Back up or I put you down, shitbird.” Raines had been winded before his fall but he didn’t feel anything other than what he was right now: an angry old bastard with a gun, ready to dispense justice.
The man just kept laughing, regarding Raines’s shotgun the same way you might regard a yappy little dog on the street: It may have wanted to kill you, but it wouldn’t be able to in a million years. As if to add credence to the big man’s nonchalance, a grassy dirt clod fell from the end of the gun, which had filled the barrel when Raines had tripped and fallen on it.
Stooping, the monstrous man picked Beck up, one hand on his belt, one hand on his ankle. While locking eyes with Raines, daring him to take a shot, the attacker flipped Beck
upside down and adjusted his grip so he was holding him by his ankles. The boy’s eyes were open now but not focusing on anything; he might as well have been asleep, for the amount of resistance he offered the big man.
Raines took a step forward, wanting to get a better shot, show this loony he meant business. As he did, he caught another whiff of that smell, his thoughts becoming more jumbled but the fragments clearer as he did. He’d have to start eating better, after the retirement party. They’d already put in an order for the suckling pig and there was no way to cancel.
“Put him down,” Raines said, flipping the safety on and then off again, just hoping the click would make a point.
In response the big man took a step to the left and brought the top of Beck’s head down on the cement walkway. It wasn’t a bigger hit than what had felled the kid to begin with, but it couldn’t have helped matters.
“I will end your miserable life, fruit basket.”
The huge man raised up Raines’s partner again.
“Shoot him, George!” Beck yelled, his face, already red from being upside down, was spotted with blood as he spoke, spittle and chipped teeth flying.
Raines took a close look at the man who held Beck up by the ankles. The man was outfitted like a soldier, knives and junk hanging off him in place of ammo clips. He sported a fresh neck wound, a bite maybe, that spurted as he flexed his shoulders and lifted Beck farther away from the walkway.
George smelled the air, the same rotten stink he’d caught a whiff of as they pulled up filling his nostrils, soaking the hairs there.
And suddenly, similar to the way he’d just played with the safety, the flicking of a switch, all Raines wanted to do was see how this was going to shake out without him intervening. Dig yourself out of this one, sport.