The Handyman

by Bentley Little

  “Yeah.”

  Taking a deep breath, I pulled the bolt aside as quickly as possible. Behind the barn door was…

  The B&B from Biscuitville.

  It was like walking onto a movie set. Identical down to the pattern on the worn carpet, the combination living room/lobby looked as tired and depressing as I remembered. I glanced up the stairs, remembering my stay, and as if to taunt me, I heard a pounding from one of the floors above that sounded like a baseball bat being hit against a wall.

  An impossibly skinny form crawled quickly on all fours across the landing.

  I jumped, startled.

  Another followed, just as skinny, scuttling just as quickly, and I thought of the naked boy who’d thrown rocks at me. I looked to the left, across the living room, through the sheer curtains that covered the closest window, but on the other side of the glass was not the plains outside of Biscuitville, but other rooms within Frank’s house, as if the bed and breakfast had been picked up and dropped intact in the middle of the enormous building.

  Teri gasped. “I saw—” She was staring up at the landing.

  “I know,” I said. “I saw it, too.”

  “It looked like a child.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “Like that kid who threw the rocks?”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “Wait.” I watched the top of the stairs but saw no additional movement. How many were there? I wondered. I had seen two, Teri another. So there were at least three, maybe more. At least they weren’t coming down. I was gripping the hammer so tightly my fingers were numb. As long as they stayed upstairs, we should be okay.

  But what to do next? We could go back the way we’d come, see what was at the opposite end of the corridor. Or we could continue through the B&B and find out what was beyond the back door.

  We definitely weren’t going upstairs.

  I thought for a moment. My impulse was to ascribe a purposeful pattern, a premeditated design, to the layout of the house, though the rooms, despite the professional construction of sections like this, betrayed the random haphazardness of the Frank I knew. Had he just thrown all this together, building willy nilly as the mood struck him? Or was there a method behind the madness? Had he designed the layers of this mazelike structure in a specific way so as to ensnare those who dared enter?

  Had he designed it for me?

  As narcissistic as it might be, the idea did not seem out of the realm of possibility, and I could not help thinking that if I unlocked the pattern of design, if I decoded the puzzle he had made, I would know what Frank was up to and would be able to find him. The different types of rooms, the things within them, had meaning to Frank, I believed. It all meant something to him, and if I could figure out the why of it, I could go after him on a more equal footing.

  Upstairs, the pounding noise had stopped, replaced by whispers that were louder than any whisper had a right to be.

  Another childlike figure scuttled spiderlike across the landing, its arms and legs spindly and far too thin.

  Four.

  There were at least four of them.

  “Come on.” I led Teri forward, down the hall, past the bathroom and supply closet, past the door to the basement. I peeked into the shabby kitchen on the way, and saw the same gas stove and ancient Frigidaire that had been in Biscuitville.

  The door at the end of the hall that should have led to a backyard opened instead onto a formal dining room. Oversized and opulent, it had a long table in the center, with at least a dozen chairs lined equally on each side. On the table, instead of place settings, was a body, half-eaten. Naked and obviously a woman, it had been decapitated and the head was nowhere to be seen. Chunks of flesh had been ripped from the thighs, chest and abdomen, and while the body looked fresh, there was no blood.

  I could still hear the whispers behind us, and in my mind I saw those spindly children seated at the table, tearing off pieces of the corpse for their meal.

  I was glad I wasn’t alone here, but I wished Teri had not come. There was no guarantee that either of us would be able to get out, and I would have felt better knowing she was safely back in California.

  “This is sick,” she said. Her voice was stronger than I expected, disgusted rather than frightened, and I wondered if Teri thought the corpse was some sort of prop or mannequin. I wasn’t about to check, but I was certain it was real, despite the lack of blood, and before she came to the same conclusion, I hurried her through the room where, on the opposite end, we walked through an open vestibule that led into a storage area. There were cobweb-embraced boxes and dust-covered trunks, ladders and saw horses, irregularly shaped items covered with tarps and sheets. I pulled up a corner of the sheet nearest to me and saw beneath it the disassembled frame and headboard of an old bed.

  Teri lifted a section of tarp to reveal an antique printing press. “What do you think happened to Mark?” she asked, apropos of nothing.

  Neither of us had mentioned that awful scream we’d heard in the seconds before we’d been locked in here, though I suspect it had been on both of our minds.

  “I think he might be dead,” I said.

  “Eaten?” she asked.

  She’d known the body on the table was real; she was simply tougher than I thought.

  “Maybe,” I admitted.

  “What about the others? Owen and Evan and Twigs? Do you think they’re still in here?”

  “They pretty much have to be; I don’t think they escaped. I doubt they followed the same path we have, but I’m sure they’re in here somewhere.”

  “Alive?”

  “I hope so.”

  But at this point I didn’t think that likely, and neither did she.

  Teri looked down at the hatchet in her hand, then up at me. “So what are we doing?” she asked. “Are we looking for a way out? Or are we looking for Frank?”

  “Whichever comes first?” I smiled feebly.

  “We’re in over our heads. This is definitely more than I expected, and I have a feeling it’s more than you bargained for, too. We can’t go up against—” She gestured around us. “—all this. At this point, we’re just…wandering around. Reacting. We need to be more proactive. We need to find a way out of here, bring in an army if we have to, and tear this thing down to the ground.”

  She was right, and that sounded good from where we were standing, but out in the real world, the same obstacle was there as before: no one was going to believe us. All the cell phone photos in the world would not be enough to convince law enforcement officials that, out here, in the middle of the desert, over the town of Plutarch, a handyman had constructed an architectural monstrosity encompassing multitudes that was home to horrors out of a scary movie.

  She squeezed my hand. “He got the rest of your family,” she said softly. “Don’t let him get you.”

  He had already, and she knew it. That was why we were here. That was why my life was my life.

  Still, I nodded, agreeing. With everything we’d encountered, there had to be some way to convince the authorities that something terrible was going on, even if they didn’t buy the specifics. Hell, a shot of the abandoned cop cars alone should bring the law swarming down on this place.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Past the storage room was a passageway. Unlike the hallways and corridors we’d previously encountered, the passage was narrow and claustrophobic, lit by dim bulbs hanging occasionally from a wire that ran down the center of the cement ceiling. A concrete floor and unadorned walls stretched forward several yards before turning right, then continued several more yards before turning left, then turned left again, then right, then left…

  Even if we had known where we were in the building, even if our sense of direction had been correctly oriented upon leaving the storage room, we would have been
hopelessly lost within moments of entering the passageway. It seemed deliberately designed to confuse. There were no side corridors we could have taken, no doors in the walls, and the only thing we could do was continue on or turn back. I felt more uncomfortable the farther along we went, not just mentally but physically. It may have been my imagination or merely the fact that I was out of shape, but I was sweating profusely. The air felt warm and damp, as though we were approaching a furnace room, and after several moments, I stopped walking, glancing over to see if Teri was having the same experience.

  She was visibly hot, her face red and drenched with sweat, but before I could say a word to her about it, I heard a noise from within the passageway behind us. A low, quiet noise barely audible above the sound of our breathing.

  The soft pad of bare feet on concrete.

  The sound chilled me to the bone. Teri heard it, too, because I saw her eyes widen, and I put my finger to my lips, warning her to remain silent.

  Pat-pat.

  Pat-pat.

  Pat-pat.

  It was growing closer. Or at least louder. Now I was not certain that it was coming from behind us. Maybe the footsteps were coming from in front of us. It was impossible to tell in this directionless labyrinth, and as much as the soft insistence of the sound, it was the fact that its source was so indeterminate that frightened me.

  Teri and I huddled closer together, weapons extended, afraid to proceed, afraid to retreat.

  Pat-pat.

  Pat-pat.

  The bare feet continued to approach.

  “What is it?” Teri whispered.

  I shook my head. And then I saw the source of the noise. An Asian girl, not more than five or six, appeared from around the corner in front of us. Dressed in a dirty shift, eyes vacant and staring, she marched desultorily forward, arms stiff at her sides, lanky hair parted in the middle and hanging down, framing her bruised face. I should have felt concern for her, should have felt sympathy for the fact that she was in this place and had clearly been abused. But I felt none of that, and it was the fact that she was here that caused my heart to race and the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck.

  Teri, I noticed, was not rushing to give her aid either. She must have felt the same way I did, and without even asking the girl if anything was wrong or if we could help, we hurried back the way we’d come, trying to get away from her.

  Another figure emerged from around the corner.

  This one was a man, a thin, heavily mustached, white trash-looking man who was shuffling toward us like a zombie. There was something off about his appearance, about the texture of his form, and it took me a second to figure out what it was.

  I could see through him.

  Not completely. There was still some there there, but his substance was not as solid as it should have been, and behind the vaguely flesh-colored face I could see the grayness of concrete wall.

  Turning in the opposite direction, I saw the girl coming toward us.

  She was not merely abused, I realized, she was dead. Her form, too, was translucent. How could I have not noticed that immediately?

  “Ghosts,” Teri said, stating aloud what I was thinking. “They’re ghosts.”

  Knowing we couldn’t make it past the man, we opted to try and go around the girl. We hugged the wall as we neared her, flattening ourselves against the cement. She paid no attention to either of us but continued walking forward, and as she passed, the hem of her shift brushed against me. I felt coldness, as though I’d been touched by ice.

  We hurried away in the direction she had come, hoping we wouldn’t run into anything else.

  Were these the people Frank had killed? I wondered. It occurred to me that maybe the wandering ghosts of Frank’s victims didn’t actually wander. Maybe he had found a way to capture and keep them. Maybe this house was like a prison or a—

  “Venus flytrap,” Teri said.

  It was as if she had read my thoughts, and I looked at her, a little spooked by the coincidence. She must have mistaken the expression on my face for one of confusion, because she said, “This house. It’s like a Venus flytrap. It attracts people here, then traps them inside and…kills them, I assume. Although that better not happen to us.” She didn’t sound as worried as I thought she should have been.

  “If he builds it, they will come,” she continued, knowing I would get the reference. “And if they die here, out in the middle of nowhere, and they’re not buried or cremated or interred where they’re supposed to be…then they wander. Or they’re Frank’s.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “Exactly.”

  There was a pause.

  “Which means he’s going to try and kill us,” Teri said.

  I nodded.

  “And we don’t have any secret spells or mystical chants that can stop him.”

  I hefted the hammer. “Just his own tools.”

  “As fitting as that might be, I don’t think it’s going to work.”

  I didn’t either.

  “We need to get out.”

  We were walking away from those two—

  Had they passed through each other? Were they even aware the other was there?

  —but not exactly hurrying, knowing that we might encounter more figures, other ghosts, at any time. If the house was a trap, I was thinking, maybe it didn’t just lure in people, killing and entombing them away from their intended burial sites, people like those policemen whose cars were outside…

  and us.

  Maybe it sucked in ghosts who were already wandering. Maybe it stored them here, using their energy. Maybe the entire house was one big battery that Frank could use for…what?

  Anything seemed possible, and the range of alternatives was dizzying.

  We still had not encountered anything else, and we turned the next corner—

  —and were in Sandy Simmons’ house.

  The passageway ended where her front door should have been. We were facing the living room, and what really unnerved me was the fact that the furnishings were identical to those in Sandy’s actual home. Had Frank been there? He had to have seen it. How else would he know where she placed her television and her couch and the rest of her furniture? Even more unexplainable was how he had replicated those items, brought them out here to Texas and installed them deep within this impossible building.

  The Simmons house meant nothing to Teri—she’d never seen it—and she pulled me forward as though we were passing through another generic room. We passed into the kitchen, and I sucked in my breath. On the floor was a white woman’s handbag I recognized.

  My mom’s.

  Your mama’s bones are in my home.

  It was not only hers, it was the one with which she’d been buried, but I didn’t want to go there, and I didn’t say anything to Teri as we stepped over and moved past it. My mind was spinning. The B&B? The Simmons home? I knew what this meant. Somewhere within this gigantic warren of rooms was our Randall house, the place where, for me, it had all started. Where Billy had died. Where perhaps the bones of my mom had been taken.

  But where was Frank?

  I imagined him sitting in some sort of control room, staring at video monitors, watching all of our movements through hidden cameras, though I knew that was highly unlikely. I’d never seen such a no-tech environment as this house, and while Frank might be watching us, I doubted it was through cameras. Behind everything here was not the machinery of science fiction but the supernatural powers of horror.

  Past the kitchen, where the door to the back patio should have been, was an archway that led into another kitchen. It might have been a mirror image of Sandy’s, but it was not. It did face in the opposite direction, but in place of modern appliances there was a wood-burning stove, an old-fashioned ice box and a gigantic sink with a hand-pump for water. In the center of the room was an unador
ned wooden dining table.

  We exited through the kitchen’s only other door into a plain primitive shack completely devoid of furniture. There were only two things within the shack: a man and a woman, naked, arms and legs spread wide, nailed to the wall on our left.

  George and Betsy.

  They had not succeeded in scaring me away, and they had clearly been punished for their failure. They were still alive, but barely, sections of skin flayed from their bodies, visible bites taken out of their arms and legs. Unlike the last time I’d seen them, they both looked their current age, faces thin and sunken, more heavily wrinkled than anyone I had ever seen. The sounds they made were pleading, heart-rending, and I had the sense that what was left of them was waiting for the arrival of a god, a savior, something to redeem their suffering.

  This location had to have some meaning. Was this the house where one of them had lived as a child? Had they played here with Frank when he was nothing more than a bad little boy, torturing bugs and animals? Was this where their lives had first become entwined with his?

  “Jesus,” Teri breathed. She turned toward me. “We have to help them. We have to get them down.”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to me, and I wasn’t sure if that was due to the unreality of this place and everything in it, the fact that I feared and resented George and Betsy because I considered them Frank’s co-conspirators, or simply a lack of common humanity on my part. But I understood what Teri was saying, and I moved across the uneven plank floor to where they were nailed onto the wall. This close, I could see the spikes that had been driven not only into their hands and feet, but into their necks and stomachs. I stopped before George, wondering how it could be possible that he and Betsy were still alive and thinking that, if by some miracle they really were, moving them could very well be a death sentence.

  “I can’t do it,” I said.

  “You have to!”

  “They’ll die if I try. Those spikes are through their necks. And organs.”