Twin Offerings

by Ruth Parker

  “Eew,” Susie had said. She’d given him a look like he’d just farted at the dinner table. She didn’t believe him. To her, it seemed far-fetched. He’d shielded them from the worst of their mother’s crimes. They had no idea what happened to them at night when their mother made them take their special vitamins.

  “Goodbye girls, we’re leaving,” his mom had said. She’d tried to grab him by the shirt collar, but he broke free. He ran to the girls and grabbed them.

  “Please,” he said. But he realized the futility. Of course they wanted to stay. They were two miserable girls and their mother had sold them a glimmer of hope. Just stay with Miss Madeline, join high society, escape your shitty life. He whispered in their ears, “This isn’t what you think. They’re going to hurt you. Please.”

  The twins looked at him, confused now, doubting their mother. They did not have the same hatred and disdain for her. They were still young enough to trust in her competence and love.

  “I don’t want to go,” Samantha said. She ran and grabbed her mother’s leg.

  “Me neither,” Susie said. She followed, grabbing their mother’s other leg.

  “Get off me,” his mother said, kicking her legs, trying to get the girls to let go. But they wouldn’t. “You’re going to stay and that’s that.”

  Miss Madeline had been looking worried, afraid that she wouldn’t get the girls. She grabbed Susie underneath the armpits and pulled her off. The girls were light, still small and childlike; they hadn’t started to grow and mature yet, probably because of their steady diet of microwaved pasta and canned corn.

  Susie screamed. Just then, a man emerged from one of the back rooms. “We got a problem?” he asked. His jeans were low, under his prodigious belly, and the ragged cuffs dragged on the ground. The neck hole on his T-shirt was stretched and loose. His face was oily and red, the pores lumpy and clogged with dirt. Did this guy help run this unholy house? Did he have privileges with the girls? Would he hold them down and—

  He charged the man. The element of surprise was the only bit of success that he had. He was able to tackle the man; they landed on the floor with a mix of grunting and cursing. He meant to choke the life from this disgusting, fat, ugly—

  Everything went red. Then black.

  When he woke up, he was in the backseat of the car, his mother driving them back home.

  He had begun to stir, his head pounding, splitting, like his skull was going to break in two. The girls were gone. Back at that hell house. He didn’t know where they were, but they were still driving; he could see the tall pines on the side of the road, blotting out the sky. He rolled over quietly, not wanting his mother to hear. He wiggled underneath, in the foot space behind the driver’s seat.

  He sprung up and wrapped his forearm underneath his mother’s head, crushing her neck as hard as he could. She gasped and gurgled. She took her hands off the steering wheel and clawed at his arm, trying to pry it free. She was feeble, her body weakened by the constant drug use, but in desperation and panic she scratched deep gashes into his skin. He was dimly aware of the pain, the blood, but it was a distant fact, something irrelevant in the back of his head. The car began to drift off the side of the road. She was kicking her feet, scrambling for purchase, trying to relieve the pressure on her neck. The car was slowing down and he felt the front wheels go onto the shoulder.

  Her scratching and kicking was weakening. He saw her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her face was dark red. Her eyes bulged out, like they were about to burst like overripe berries. There was fear and pain and panic in her eyes.

  His heart was filled with wild, exuberant glee.

  She finally fell limp, her body unable to resist any longer. She jerked and twitched. Then she was still.

  The car had coasted to a stop. The engine was running. The radio was broadcasting a commercial for a local mattress discounter.

  He was afraid to let go of her neck. He imagined she would gasp and scream and come back to life, hell-bent on revenge. He slowly eased the pressure on her throat. She slumped forward, hitting her head on the steering wheel. He got out of the car and dragged her body into the woods. There was a dark spot on the driver’s seat, and it took him a moment to realize that she’d pissed herself.

  He didn’t have anything to bury her with, so he covered her with leaves. He didn’t think the body would be found any time soon. When she finally was, he’d be long gone with the girls, off in California or Idaho.

  He retraced the route, trying to find Miss Madeline’s rundown old house.

  But they never made it to California or Idaho or Washington. He’d found the house. He sat in the car for a long time, idling in the road, wondering about what was going on inside. Trying to think of a plan.

  He wouldn’t be able to get them. What was he going to do? Barge in the front door and demand his sisters? That wasn’t going to happen. He could call the cops… but then he’d have to answer some questions, mainly where is your mother?

  He drove on.

  He made it back home as the sun was setting. He got a flashlight and the old rusty shovel and then got back in the car. It was full dark by the time he got to the place where he’d left his mother’s body, but he was able to find her easily. He dug the grave, wondering how many other kids at his high school had dug not only one but two full-sized graves.

  He’d wait. He’d make an anonymous call to the police. The girls would go into foster care, then he could get them. It would be easier that way.

  So he waited. And waited. There was always a reason why he would put it off—but it all came back to fear. Fear of getting caught and arrested for murder. Fear of seeing his sisters broken and bruised with nothing but hate and pain in their eyes. Fear of seeing his sister scabbed, gaunt, searching for another hit of the same shit that had ruined their mother’s life.

  He never made the call.

  One day, about a month later, he’d driven to the old hell house and saw that it was deserted. He’d gone to the library, looked at the old newspapers. He didn’t have to look that hard. Three days ago, there had been a carbon monoxide leak.

  Everyone inside had died.

  He’d called the county morgue, posing as a newspaper reporter, and asked if there had been two twin girls who had been brought in recently. The attendant had responded, “Yeah, the teen prostitutes? We got them here. Still looking for an ID.”

  He’d hung up the phone. That was all the closure he needed.

  Years later, he’d been at a swap meet and seen a tea set on a dusty old folding table. It was like a knife in the heart. The bright white glazed ceramic, the delicate little roses circling the rim. He’d talked with the seller and found out that he had eleven of them, boxed and brand new. He’d bought the whole lot for five hundred dollars. He’d had to sell off a couple of the sets when cash was tight, and it had pained him then and pained him even more now, knowing that those damned sales were what led the cops to his doorstep. The cops would be back. They were stupid and slow, but they’d get it eventually.

  He stirred Laurel’s tea and took a tiny sip. It tasted fine, no trace of the power. He put the cup on its saucer and made his way to the basement. He would bring her up to his bedroom. They would get to know each other a little bit. He needed to apologize for what he’d done to her sister. She would understand. She was beautiful inside and out. He would tell her about his sisters. He had never told anyone.

  After he found out what happened to Susie and Samantha, he’d stayed in his mother’s house. She’d inherited it when her mother died, and it was paid off. He just had to scrounge enough money for electricity and heat. Twice a year he had to come up with a couple hundred dollars for the property taxes. No one bothered him. He’d gotten a job and kept to himself. No one knew about what he’d been through. It had festered inside his stomach for all these years.

  He would finally be able to tell Laurel his story. Not only that. Laurel was his family now—they would get to consummate their relationship. He ha
d never been with a woman. Not ever. It had always been too weird. He never got out much, never really had friends or a normal social life. Talking to women? Asking them on dates? No way.

  He’d driven to the sketchy parts of Portland once when he was younger, when the hot desire to be with a woman was so strong he could hardly stand it. He’d searched for a prostitute, a girl to help satisfy his needs. He eyed a girl who was leaning against a building, smoking a cigarette and waiting to be picked up. He’d rolled down the car window, was about to ask her to come over and talk. The girl’s hair was blond, but it was styled big and curly and it reminded him of his sisters. The horrible things his mother had done to them. He wondered who had done horrible things to this pretty young girl. Someone must have done something to her—why else would she be standing out in the cold, waiting to sell her body to any strange man with a little bit of cash?

  He’d never touched a woman, never known the excitement of taking off a woman’s shirt to reveal her soft skin. Didn’t know what that warm, pink wetness actually felt like. He’d gotten used to his celibacy over the years, but now that he finally had the chance, the excitement and anticipation was making him crazy.

  He got the keys from the kitchen drawer and slipped them into his pocket. Even though he’d been thinking about his past, thinking about his poor sisters, he couldn’t help smiling.

  For the first time in his life, he was happy.

  Twenty-Five

  The hinge pin would not come off. They would have had a chance if there hadn’t been several coats of petrified paint sealing the pin in place. Madison had dismantled a coat hanger, removing the thin wooden dowel that ran across the bottom of the hanger, the part where you were supposed to drape your pants. It was just the right size to wedge up underneath the hinge. She’d seen her dad do it; he stuck a metal punch underneath the hinge, aiming it right up into the center of the pin. Then he’d whacked the handle of the screwdriver with his big rubber mallet until the pin popped up about an inch. After that, he’d used his pliers to pull it up and out the rest of the way.

  So far, nothing had budged. At all. Laurel had been helping, holding the dowel in place while Madison pushed at it with the base of the desk lamp. Then Madison held it while Laurel tried to push. It would be better if they could whack at the dowel, but that would cause too much noise. They weren’t sure if the man was upstairs or not.

  Laurel even dug her face into the hinge, trying to see if she could get her teeth around it and pull it up that way. Laurel chipped a small point off one of her molars, but that was the only thing that gave way.

  Laurel did a lot of cursing, but it didn’t help. They rested for a while, each eating a sandwich that the man had left earlier that morning. “Have to keep up our strength,” she’d told Madison, shoving a sandwich in the girl’s hand. Melissa was dozing on the couch. That was probably for the best. When Melissa woke up, she’d be nervous and Madison had enough to worry about. This lady had shown up down here this morning—well, shown up was the wrong word for it—and she had pledged to get them out of the basement. At first, Madison had let herself hope… but now she wasn’t so sure. There was only one way out of this basement and their best idea wasn’t working.

  After they finished their sandwiches, taking mechanical, joyless bites, they crept back up the stairs to try again. Laurel got down on her stomach, looking up towards the bottom hinge. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver, which was only part of their problem. She took the dowel and jammed it underneath, then pushed slow and steadily with all her might. She felt the hinge push up just a tiny click. When it gave, she let go with a loud gasp. Her hand was raw and red from her efforts. The pin-head stuck out just a little bit. But it might be enough. Laurel had an idea.

  She began to untie her shoe, quickly unlacing it and wrapping the shoelace around the pin-head. She then squatted on the top stair and pulled up on the shoelace. She felt like she was trying to uproot the world’s most stubborn turnip. But she had enough leverage, and coming at the pin from the top, she was able to use all the strength from her legs and her back to pull.

  The pin popped free, catching Laurel off guard. She was pulling hard and the sudden release made her tumble down the stairs. She caught herself halfway down, clinging to the railing. She’d scraped her elbows and twisted her ankle, but Laurel didn’t care. All she cared about was hearing the clink as the hinge pin hit the floor. Madison pumped her arm in a silent victory salute.

  Their good spirits didn’t last long, however. That was the bottom pin. The easy pin. Laurel had serious doubts about getting out the top pin. There would be no leverage, no way to pull it up.

  Laurel crawled back up the stairs, every stair sending a spike of fresh pain in her ankle. They tried with the dowel to get the top pin out, but they had mashed the ends of the stick too much already. “Hold on,” Madison whispered. She remembered when she’d been helping her dad take the door off the hinges at home. When they’d gotten the bottom one off, but the top one was still on, her dad had sternly told her to hold the door absolutely still. Don’t tweak it, he’d said. You’ll pull the screws out of the wall.

  “We can twist it,” Madison said. She tried to squeeze her hand between the door and the jamb. It wouldn’t fit, so she pried with her fingernails.

  The pain was bright, a white flash that faded to black. She thought she might faint. Her finger was cold, numb, then throbbing, burning hot. She was afraid to look down at her finger. But she did. She was too shocked, too stunned, too horrified. Her fingernail had been ripped off. There was a shiny spot where the nail had been. Tiny pinpricks of blood sprouted and began to spread.

  Laurel came up behind her and put her hand on Madison’s shoulder. “Go sit down, sweetie,” she said. “Go sit on the couch and drink some juice.” Laurel took the girl down the stairs and made her drink some juice. The girl’s injury wasn’t bad—but she had been under so much stress, Laurel was afraid she might go into shock. She put a cold, wet washcloth around the girl’s finger and told her to rest.

  Laurel let Madison stay on the couch while she investigated the door. Madison had been right; they would be able to twist and tweak the door and pull the screws of the top hinge right out of the wall. But it would make an awful noise. They’d have the element of surprise on their side. The man definitely wouldn’t expect the basement door to—literally—come busting off the hinges.

  “We can do it,” Madison said. She’d gotten off the couch and come up the stairs. She still had the washcloth wrapped tightly around her finger, but looked like she’d regained her color and conviction—the latter being more important than the former.

  “You’re right,” Laurel said. “But it’s risky. We’d make a lot of noise while we were trying to wiggle it free. That would give him time to rush over here and see what was going on.”

  “If you don’t want to make a loud noise, we can just pry the bottom part open a little bit. I can squeeze through. I can sneak out the house and go get help. Or I can find the phone and call 911. They say if you just dial 911 and leave it off the hook, they’ll trace the call and send a cop car to check it out.”

  Madison’s bravery brought tears to Laurel’s eyes. Madison was willing to go out into certain hell to save her sister. It was admirable, but there was no fucking way Laurel would let this little girl go out into the rest of the house alone. Not a chance. “We don’t know what’s on the other side of that door,” she said.

  “We can’t just stay in here. This guy is weird. He hasn’t, like, done anything, but he’s creepy. He’s going to kill us.”

  Laurel didn’t say anything. When she first woke up down here, she was almost resigned to her fate. She’d cheated death once, fifteen years ago, by offering her sister to this madman while she slunk out a window.

  Then she’d seen the girls. Madison, especially, with her bright eyes and determination, was so much like Leigh. Laurel had thought in her painful, fuzzy head that if she saved the girls she could somehow atone for wha
t she’d done to Leigh. But now, after coming so close to getting the door off the hinges—Laurel realized something else.

  She wanted out of here. Not because of Leigh. Not because of Madison and Melissa. Laurel wanted out of here because she was selfish. She wanted to see Fletcher again. She couldn’t stand the idea that he would blame himself for her death. Couldn’t stand the idea that their time together had been so brief—just one steamy hot night when what they had between them was so much deeper.

  The anger burned inside her when she thought about it. How she’d been cheated. She’d been cheated out of a sister, out of a normal family. Cheated almost out of her sanity. She’d never let anyone close. And just now when Fletcher had pushed himself into her life and there was a glimmer of happiness coming up on the horizon, this crazy asshole was going to cheat her again. It wasn’t fair.

  She was going to get out. And get revenge.

  She thought about how easily she’d been tricked. A crumpled blue bed sheet was all he’d needed. He was the only person on earth who knew the truth about what had happened fifteen years ago—the only other person on earth who knew the depths of her dark and treacherous soul. He’d used that information, had set up a trap that she’d gleefully walked right into.

  Well, he wasn’t the only one who could set up a trap.

  “I know he’s finally going to kill us,” Laurel said. She felt the corners of a plan start to take shape. “But I’ve got a plan.”