by Mark Lukens
“I need to go check on Rita.”
“But … but that lady …”
“She’s hurt,” Pam answered quickly. “Grandpa hurt her. He saved us from her.” She hated giving her father any kind of glory, but she needed to do anything to keep her daughter out here and safe. “Please, Sarah, just wait out here. Over there by the bushes. Stay out of sight until the police get here.”
“Mom …”
“I mean it, Sarah,” Pam snapped.
Sarah nodded, and she ran over to the line of shrubs that began at the edge of the walkway and crouched down behind them.
Pam went back inside the house and shut the door. She locked it and then turned around and studied the foyer. She listened for any sounds, but she didn’t hear anything—the house was eerily quiet.
She crept through the house with the gun gripped in her hand. The gun was heavier than she expected it to be, and it felt unnatural in her hand. Her palm and fingers were getting slick with sweat now.
Before going to the kitchen, Pam glanced at the basement door. It was still closed and she didn’t hear any sounds coming from down there.
Had she locked the door? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think so.
She hurried over to the door and tested the door handle gently. It wasn’t locked.
How could she have forgotten to lock the basement door? Her memory seemed like a blur right now, but she remembered Sarah running up to her with the cell phone in her hand, distracting her for a moment.
She could lock the door now, but Maria could’ve already gotten out of the basement while she was outside with her daughter.
She twisted the little knob on the door handle that locked the door, and then continued on to the kitchen. She entered the kitchen and it was exactly how it was before, the bowl was still upside down on the floor. The food preparations were still on the counters.
As she got closer to the pantry, Pam thought she heard a noise in there, a slight shuffling sound. She almost called out for Rita, but then she thought of Maria. What if Maria was in there finishing the job on Rita that she had started?
Pam crept around the corner and just ducked out of the way as something whizzed past her head. She heard something heavy crash into the wall right behind her—a can of soup.
“Pam?” Rita said from inside the pantry.
Pam ducked her head back inside the doorway and saw Rita standing there with another can of food in her hands, cocked back like a pitcher ready to throw a fast ball. Then she lowered the can and smiled. “I thought you might’ve been Maria. She attacked me.”
Pam breathed out a sigh of relief. Rita was bleeding and wobbly, but she seemed to be okay.
“I know. The police and an ambulance are on their way.”
“And Maria?”
Pam shook her head. “She’s not going to hurt us anymore.”
THIRTY-FIVE
The police arrived before the paramedics. Pam and Rita waited by the front door with Sarah. Pam left the gun right in front of the door on the mat and she made sure she told the police about it as soon as they got there. They automatically tensed at the sight of the gun.
The officers told Pam that an ambulance was on the way, and Pam could already hear the sound of more sirens in the distance.
“Who else is in the house?” an older officer asked Pam. He seemed to be the one in charge of the four police officers.
“My father and his nurse Maria are in the basement. That’s Maria’s gun. She had it pointed at my … at my daughter.”
“Okay,” the older cop said. “Does she have any other weapons on her that you know of?”
“No, sir. My father, he’s very ill. He has … he’s dying of cancer. Maria, she wanted to … she was going to kill us all.”
“Where’s the door to the basement?” the older cop asked.
Pam gave him the directions.
The older cop nodded at the younger three officers and they headed inside the house with their weapons drawn.
Moments later, which seemed like hours to Pam, the older officer’s shoulder mike crackled. “Sargent Davis. You might want to come down here and take a look at this.”
The older cop’s eyes shifted to Pam. “Just wait here.”
The ambulance’s siren died down as it sped down the long driveway towards the house, its flashing lights joining in with the lights on the police cars.
• • •
Pam found out later that the police found Maria inside the hole in the wall in the basement. She was still in a catatonic state, and she was still in the death grip of Carl who had died—but he still wouldn’t let her go.
“He won’t let me go,” Maria kept whispering to no one in particular as they tried to pry Carl’s arms off of her.
When the cops pulled Maria out, they had to drag Carl halfway out of the hole in the process before they could finally break his grip on her.
Over the next few days Pam told her story, as improbable as the whole thing sounded, over and over again to detectives. But Rita and Sarah corroborated Pam’s story one hundred percent in every detail. And Pam’s lawyer was right beside her the entire time.
Maria was eventually charged with attempted murder, but she was sent to a psychiatric ward and no one was even sure if she was going to be able to stand trial. She hadn’t really ever recovered from her short time in the dark hole while trapped in Carl’s dead embrace.
Pam still couldn’t help wondering what her father had whispered into Maria’s ear while they were in that dark hole together, the seeds he had planted, the things she saw in her mind, the things she now experienced alone in her padded cell.
Over the next few weeks Pam met with more lawyers to discuss the estate of her father. Everything had been left to her, so it was pretty easy for the lawyers. She told the lawyers that she didn’t want the house or the property—she wanted to sell it for whatever she could get for it. They recommended a real estate agency for her. As for any possessions inside the house, Pam spent a few days collecting the things she wanted: her old dollhouse, her father’s blue book of experimental psychiatry with the gold key inside, her mother’s jewelry. But everything else was auctioned off.
It took months, but eventually the house and its contents were sold, and the money was squirreled away by Pam’s financial advisors into investments and retirement accounts, and a large trust fund for Sarah.
Pam’s father’s death, and the bizarre circumstances surrounding it, had made the national news and Pam thought that the story might draw Doug out of the woodwork. She could see her husband crawling back to her now that she was a multi-millionaire. But he didn’t come back. He didn’t even call.
Good riddance, she thought.
THIRTY-SIX
Pam saw Dr. Stanton for their weekly appointment.
Over the last few weeks she had told Dr. Stanton everything that had happened at her father’s house. She had finally faced her fears and unlocked her memories. Was she better off for it? She wasn’t really sure, but Dr. Stanton seemed to think she was. He seemed to think that there was some unfinished business in her memories to deal with, and now she could start over fresh now.
“The nightmares,” Pam said. “I mean the dreams, they’re gone now.”
“For now,” Dr. Stanton said. “But they can always come back. And if they do, you need to listen to what they’re telling you.”
Pam nodded. It was going to take a while to totally get over all of this.
“I still haven’t heard anything from Doug,” Pam said, changing the subject.
Dr. Stanton didn’t say anything; he just grunted slightly which she knew was his signal for her to continue.
“It’s been almost six months now, and no word from him at all. I thought for sure he would contact me after I inherited my father’s estate.”
“You think he wants your money?”
“Well, we are still technically married. I thought he would’ve been on my doorstep demanding his share.”
Dr. Stanton was
quiet for a moment and Pam didn’t say anything. She wasted precious minutes that she could more than afford now.
“I still think there are other memories buried somewhere in your psyche,” Dr. Stanton finally said.
“I hope not,” Pam said. “I’m not so sure I can deal with any more.” The joke didn’t seem to amuse Dr. Stanton. She noticed that he seemed more serious now, and for some reason his demeanor set off a tickle of fear in her stomach.
“What?” she finally asked him. “Is something wrong?”
Dr. Stanton sighed. He seemed like he wanted to say something, but he was hesitating, like he wasn’t quite sure if it was his place to say anything.
Pam stared at him. “What is it?”
“I just can’t help thinking how similar the two things are … your mother leaving you when you were eight years old, and your husband leaving you the same way.”
Pam didn’t answer. She let his words sink in. And she suddenly saw the connection he was trying to get at.
“Time’s up for today,” Dr. Stanton said with a fake smile and he snapped his leather-bound notebook closed.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Dr. Stanton watched as Pam left his office. He closed the door behind her, and then he walked back to his chair and sat down. He sat there for a long moment, staring at the door.
Then he got up and walked over to his office door. He twisted the lock on the door handle. He strolled over to his desk and called his secretary. He told her that he was finished with his patients for the day and that she could leave. He assured her that he would lock everything up.
While he waited for his secretary to go home, Dr. Stanton opened a side table on the far side of his office and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a thick glass. He poured the amber liquid into the glass and stared at it for a moment. Then he swallowed the fiery liquid down his throat in a few gulps. He poured a few more ounces into his glass and drank this one more slowly.
As his mind clouded a little with a sudden buzz from the alcohol, he walked to his filing cabinet and crouched down in front of it. He opened the lowest drawer and pulled all the files out and stacked them up on the floor beside him. At the back of the drawer was a false front. He reached deep into the filing cabinet and unclasped the false door and it fell down onto the drawer bottom. He reached into the secret compartment and pulled out a video tape with a white label on it. Scrawled on the label in neat print were the words: Girl P. Case # 2068
He had been there that day when Dr. Westbrook had conducted his mind control experiment on Girl P. He had filmed the whole thing for him.
He remembered holding the camera that day, filming as the little girl walked to the next room and calmly chopped the ax down into what she thought was her mother laying on the gurney.
Dr. Stanton set the VHS tape back inside the filing cabinet and closed the false door in front of it. One by one, he put the files back into the drawer, and then closed it.
Pam had told him that she had destroyed the only copy of that tape. But she didn’t know that he had this one. Maybe one day the world would know of Dr. Carl Westbrook’s groundbreaking experiments … but not right now.
Dr. Stanton still had more work to do.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Pam picked Sarah up from Nancy’s house after her appointment with Dr. Stanton.
When they got in the car, Sarah said she’d had a good time playing with Amber. She went on about the games they had been playing.
As Sarah talked, Pam tuned her out—something she hardly ever did. But she couldn’t get Dr. Stanton’s words out of her mind. The similarities between her mom leaving and her husband leaving loomed in her mind.
But her mother hadn’t left her, she had been murdered.
A knot of fear was trapped in her stomach as she drove. She felt a sense of dread cocooning her. It felt like she knew the answer to what Dr. Stanton was saying, but she didn’t want to face it.
“Sarah, honey,” Pam said, interrupting her daughter’s words as they turned onto the street they lived on. “What game were you and Grandpa playing over the last few years?”
Sarah went quiet and looked out the window.
“Grandpa is gone now,” Pam said. “You can tell me.”
“It’s supposed to be a secret,” Sarah whispered.
“Why don’t you want to tell me?” Pam asked. “It’s really hurting my feelings that you won’t tell me about this.”
Sarah shrugged.
Pam pulled up into their driveway and turned the car off. Sarah got out of the car without another word and closed the door.
Pam decided to let it go for now. But there was something still nagging at her, something she needed to check, just to set her mind at ease.
They entered the house and Pam closed and locked the front door.
“Can I have a snack?” Sarah asked.
“Just a few cookies,” Pam said as she followed her daughter into the kitchen.
“A few as in two, or a few as in three?”
“Three’s okay.”
Pam watched Sarah as she got three cookies out of the pack in the pantry. Pam poured a glass of milk for her.
“Sarah,” she asked as she set the glass of milk down in front of her. “Don’t you ever wonder about Daddy? You ever wonder why he left?”
Sarah chewed on a cookie and just shrugged.
“Sarah?”
“Daddy wasn’t a nice person,” Sarah said. “I don’t care if he comes back.”
“I know your Dad could get angry sometimes,” Pam said. “But …”
“He used to hurt you,” Sarah said and finally looked at Pam. Her big blue eyes looked like they were on the verge of tears. “Don’t you remember?”
A memory floated to Pam’s surface: a shout, a cry, Doug yelling.
“I saw him,” Sarah said and she started to cry. “I saw him hit you. I saw it a bunch of times.”
Now the memories were beginning to come back to Pam. How could she have forgotten? The terror, the pain, the shame—all of it was coming back to her in a rush, and it felt like she couldn’t breathe.
She needed to check the basement right now. No matter how horrifying it might be, she needed to know.
Pam rushed out of the kitchen and practically ran to the basement door. She opened the door, flipped on the light, and then shuffled down the steps. The basement was cluttered with furniture, some of Doug’s motorcycle parts, Sarah’s old toys and tricycles that she didn’t use anymore.
But the one piece of furniture against the back wall stopped her cold. It was a large, heavy dresser that came up to her shoulders.
Pam stood in front of the dresser for a moment without really remembering walking towards it. She prayed this wasn’t true, that it wasn’t real. And then she pushed the piece of furniture aside. The legs scraped across the concrete floor and she grunted with the effort.
After she had moved the dresser out of the way, she stared at the block wall. There was an area in the wall that had newer-looking blocks and mortar joints.
She felt her stomach twist with nausea.
Then she heard Sarah’s footsteps behind her in the basement.
“Grandpa showed me how,” Sarah whispered. “He showed me how to count backwards from ten.”
“Oh God,” Pam cried without turning around to look at her daughter. “What did I do? What did you make me do?”
“He was bad. He was hurting you. He hurt me, too.”
Pam just stared at the block wall as her tears blurred her vision.
“I can make you forget again,” Sarah whispered.
Pam just sobbed more, still not turning around, not wanting to look at her daughter. But she could feel that her daughter was right behind her now.
“Ten … nine … eight …” Sarah whispered. “You won’t remember any of this. Seven … six … five … Daddy was a bad man and he just went away. He won’t come back. He won’t hurt us anymore. Four … three … two … We didn’t do anything wrong.”
&
nbsp; Pam closed her eyes, the tears streaming down her face. She felt a little better now, like she could breathe again, like everything was going to be okay now.
Everything was going to be just fine.
“One,” Sarah said in a sharp voice, and then she snapped her fingers.
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
I really appreciate you purchasing my book and reading it. I know there are so many books to choose from these days, and I honestly thank you for taking the time to read mine. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions at [email protected]. I can also be found on Facebook (MarkLukensBooks), and on Twitter @marklukensbooks. My website is: MarkLukensBooks.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’ve been writing since the second grade when my teacher called my parents in for a conference because the ghost story I’d written had her a little concerned. By the time I was fourteen years old I was reading every Stephen King book I could find in the public library. I was hooked—I knew I had to be a writer. Since then I’ve went on to many professions. I was a drywall hanger, a concrete laborer, a line cook, a kitchen manager, a lawn technician, and a welder. I started several businesses including a drywall business. But through the years I was always reading and always writing.
In recent years I’ve had several stories published and I’ve had four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood; one script is in development to be made into a film. I’ve written eight novels, two novellas, and a collection of short stories, most of which are available on Amazon/Kindle. I’m a proud member of The Horror Writers Association.
I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. But after many travels and adventures, I settled down in Tampa, Florida with my wonderful wife and son, and a stray cat we adopted. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions at [email protected]. I can also be found on Facebook at MarkLukensBooks and on Twitter @marklukensbooks. And my website is MarkLukensBooks.com.