by A. R. Wise
Tom walked to the end of the bed and kicked a lever underneath it. Paul’s feet fell as his head rose, a disorienting shift in perspective as he was stood upright, still strapped to the gurney. He felt his feet slide down against a cold metal shelf that he could stand on as the restraints around his ankle tightened. He wasn’t perpendicular to the floor, but rather at a slight angle that caused him to stare at where the walls met the ceiling. Tom moved around behind him and kicked another lever that made Paul suddenly mobile.
Oliver blocked the door.
“Move it,” said Tom from behind Paul.
“Please reconsider this, Tom. I’ve been waiting for a chance like this for sixteen years. You can’t possibly understand what this could mean for us.”
“I understand that I was sent here to put an end to this, once and for all,” said Tom. “You’ve flushed enough funds down the shitter.”
“Money?” Oliver was exasperated. “Is that all you people ever think about? If you’d let me do my work we’d never have to worry about money again. Cada E.I.B. would be wealthier than most countries!”
“314,” said Paul.
Both Tom and Oliver stopped arguing. Oliver stared at Paul and asked, “What did you say?”
“The name of the company is code for pi,” said Paul. “Right?”
Tom chuckled from behind Paul. “Kid, you just keep digging your hole deeper and deeper.”
Oliver hushed the old guard, and then looked back at Paul. “How do you know that? Why are you here? Were you planning on staying here until the fourteenth? What were you going to do?”
“That’s enough,” said Tom as he tried to push the gurney forward.
Oliver put his foot in front of the wheel, halting Tom’s progress. “Why did one of you write 314 on the floor in blood? Did you know Alma or her mother before they died?”
“What?” asked Paul, suddenly furious. “If you hurt her I swear to God I’ll…”
“Hurt her?” asked the doctor, bewildered. “We never hurt her. Alma and her mother died in a murder-suicide twelve years ago.”
Paul just stared at the doctor, unable to respond.
“Her mother drove her off a cliff and into a lake not far from here. They both drowned.”
“No.” Paul felt the blood drain from his face. “That can’t be. I love her. I was going to ask her to marry me.”
Tom laughed. “Christ, this asshole’s a mental case. He thinks he’s in love with a dead girl. Move out of the way, Oliver. It’s time we close the book on the Widowsfield experiment.”
Chapter 9 – Even If It Kills Me
There was a time when I was free to wander Widowsfield. I’d been working there with a man named Oliver, who wanted to know everything about how the town had looked right before the incident on March 14th, 1996. I drew pictures for him, detailing as much information as I could get. He wasn’t willing to pay me very much at first, but I was eventually able to get a sizeable raise.
When I first got to Widowsfield, I had no idea what I was stepping in to. This was just supposed to be a short-time gig, but it ended up dominating my every waking moment. Every time I sketched out a picture in that notebook for him, I felt tied even closer to the events. They intermingled into my own life, as if the fates of the people that lived in Widowsfield were somehow tied to my own.
All those poor people.
Maybe that’s why I come back; like the last living family member visiting a graveyard, hoping to connect with loved ones that have passed on. That’s not it though. If anything, I’m the last sentinel left that can keep the corpses in their graves.
Lost in Widowsfield
Alma didn’t know where to run.
The fog was behind her, and Widowsfield was ahead.
They were trapped in the Widowsfield of March 14th, 1996. It was nearly 3:14, and nothing made sense any more. She’d fled with the others from Aubrey, who had turned into some sort of demon, bleeding and breaking as they watched.
She looked back and saw that the fog had closed in on her. Stephen was carrying Rachel, her ankle twisted from falling as they ran, and Jacker was in front of them.
“Keep going,” said the bearded stranger – the man that Alma couldn’t explain how she knew. Her first memory of him was when he busted down the door of her apartment because he thought she was in trouble. Why he’d been guarding the door was a mystery to them both.
The fog advanced, yards ahead of where it had been, now well past the van. A black shape twisted in the mist, and when the green electricity coursed along the cloud it never penetrated the shade.
Alma faced forward, now running through an unfamiliar neighborhood. She closed her eyes and focused only on the sound of her bare feet hitting the pavement. The rhythmic slap and the sensation of the pebbles on the road were a sort of salvation from the hell that surrounded her.
“Keep going!” Jacker screamed at her, but he sounded far off.
She glanced back, and saw that the fog had enveloped her friends. It was flowing down the street like a tidal wave, and the silhouettes of the others were hardly perceptible against the monstrous dark hidden within the mist.
“In here,” said a child from somewhere nearby.
Alma saw a girl, sopping wet, her black hair clinging to her pale forehead. She was at the threshold of a house to Alma’s right, wearing a nightgown that was stuck to her skin and nearly translucent. She waved at Alma, and then retreated into the house.
The fog bank continued to roll across the street, the green electricity crackling along its edge and snapping at objects that were swallowed by the mass. The little girl’s home seemed to be the only possible refuge from the wave, and Alma had little choice but to head that way. She ran into the house and slammed the door behind her.
A young boy yelped in shock as Alma came through the door. He was no older than ten, with dirty feet and rolled up jeans. He had on oven mitts and was carrying a pot of boiling water through the living room from the kitchen, following a muddy path up the stairs.
“Who are you?” asked the boy.
There were other children in the house, some up the stairs and others in the kitchen. They all stopped to stare at the invader.
“I’m Alma,” she said. “The girl invited me in.”
“What girl?” asked the boy with the pot of water.
“The one with the black hair,” said Alma. “She was just here.”
“There’re no girls here,” said one of the boys in the kitchen, the tallest of the group but still just a child. “They’re all headed to the reservoir to see the warship. They can’t come here. Only us men can handle these jobs.”
A piercing wail came from up the stairs. Alma stumbled back to the door as she stared up, terrified of what had happened to incite such a pained cry.
The boy with the pot of water headed up the stairs. “I have to go before the dead one tries anything.”
Two other boys came down, moving to allow the child with the pot of water to go up. The two coming down had pots of their own, and scowled at Alma as they passed. She looked into their pots and saw that they were empty.
“What are you doing?” asked Alma. “What’s going on up there?” As a teacher, it was natural for her to feel suddenly protective of the children, like a mother hen adopting a flock. “Be careful with that water.”
A man screamed again from upstairs and Alma rushed ahead of the boy with the water. She pointed at the stairs and commanded, “Put that down, now.”
“No,” said the boy. “Who do you think you are? We’ll boil you too.”
“What?” asked Alma, but didn’t have time to argue. She needed to put a stop to whatever was happening in this house.
Then the fog covered the home, swiftly blocking the sunlight that had been coming in through the windows. She felt suddenly chilled as the cloud overcame them, but the children seemed delighted, some even cheering.
“We’re safe,” said a child from the kitchen.
“He didn’t for
get us,” said another.
“Of course he didn’t,” said the boy on the stairs behind Alma. “He’s our friend. He’ll protect us.”
Alma walked down the hall, her feet squishing in the wet carpet as she went. There was something going on in the bathroom, and she went to the door to see if someone within was hurt – what she saw was more shocking than anything she could’ve possibly been prepared for.
A young boy was standing in the middle of the bathroom, his cheeks bleeding and a straight razor in his hand. Another boy was on the edge of the tub holding an electric drill that was plugged into an outlet beside the mirror.
“He keeps waking up,” said the boy with the drill just before he saw Alma at the door.
Alma was aghast, a sense of true horror freezing her as she stared into the bathroom. A man, or what was left of one, was seated in the tub. His left arm was raised, tied to the shower head with a long wire, and his head was flopped to the side. The child with the drill was grasping the man’s hair, and was pointing the drill bit into his victim’s lower jaw. The unconscious man’s skin was bright red, burned and ripped, with slices across his naked chest. His lower lip had been partially severed, left to hang like a piece of dinner from his drooping jaw.
“Don’t come any closer,” said the boy with the drill.
Alma couldn’t speak. She was paralyzed by fear.
The boy with the razor turned to her and screamed in shock. “No!” He raised the blade to his throat and started to saw madly, easily slicing into his jugular and releasing a gush of blood. He dropped the blade as he fell to his hands and knees, the blood pumping from his throat and mixing with the fluid on the floor.
Alma had seen throats slashed in horror films countless times, but seeing it for real was something completely different. The child didn’t fall dead, an immediate victim of his self-inflicted wound. Instead, he crawled on the bathroom floor as the blood pumped out, gushing with the cadence of his heartbeat. He reached up to touch his throat, seeming to want to cover his wound, but then had to put his hand back down to keep balanced. A sliced throat was not a quick death. It was agony.
“I don’t want to be your dog!” The other child, still holding the drill while perched on the edge of the filled tub, was screaming at Alma. He swung his legs over the side and into the hot, bloody soup, and then dropped the drill in.
The bathroom went dark as the lights above the mirror exploded. Alma was blinded for a moment and could only listen as the child’s body thrashed in the tub, splashing water over the edge. Then the socket where the drill was plugged in zapped, revealing a haunting snapshot of the room. One boy was still on his hands and knees, while the other was in the corner of the tub furthest from Alma, apparently propelled there by a violent reaction to his electrocution. However, even worse than the sight of the dead and dying children, was that the adult corpse in the tub was now standing.
Alma was frozen, but not by terror. Her entire body was clenched and held in place, and if it weren’t for the sensation of pressure against her skin she might’ve assumed she’d been paralyzed. She could see and breathe, but it felt as if she were wrapped by some tightening restraint.
The light socket zapped again, revealing the man in the tub as he reached up to the wire that tied his wrist to the shower head.
Smoke filled the room, and the smell was sickening. Alma had never smelled anything like it – a mixture of melting wallpaper, burning wood, and cooking flesh.
The socket crackled again, but this time a flame came to life, shooting up the wall as if following accelerant. The darkness abated, but Alma’s vision barely improved. The entire bathroom was now flooded with what she thought was smoke, but then saw the swirling mass wrapping itself around her body. She realized that the fog had caught her. It seized her as if it were a solid object, and was the reason she’d been forced to stand aside and watch as the two boys committed suicide.
Alma could hear the man in the tub moving. She heard the wire scrape on the metal shower head as he pulled it off. Water dripped from his body, plopping in the tub, and then she heard the droplets hitting the floor and knew that he was walking her way. The fog was too thick for Alma to see, but she could feel the man’s presence coming closer.
Then his teeth chattered.
“You shouldn’t be here,” said The Skeleton Man. “It’s not time for you yet.”
March 14th, 1998
Outside of Widowsfield
“Why are you running the water again?” asked Amanda Harper.
Alma sunk beneath the water in the hotel bathtub. Her backside rubbed against the plastic grips stuck to the bottom that had been put there to keep patrons from slipping and having a reason to sue the owners. This wasn’t the type of hotel that could afford lawsuits.
Alma had used a full bottle of the miniature shampoo that was set on the sink to create bubbles in the tub – it didn’t work well, and she wondered if the bottle had been half filled with water, the same way her mother did at home.
Being under water was the easiest way for Alma to drown out the world around her. It felt like a different world, where her heartbeat dominated her existence, overcome only by the squeak of her hands against the smooth sides and the roar of the faucet as she let it run.
“Alma.” Her mother’s voice was dulled by the water, but still audible. “Alma Harper, I told you not to fill the tub all the way up.”
Amanda turned off the tap and then reached under the frothy bubbles to pull her daughter up. Alma kept her eyes shut and gasped as she emerged from the tub. Amanda wiped the bubbles from the girl’s eyes. “Look at me,” said Amanda.
“No, I’ve got soap on my face,” said Alma.
“I wiped it off.”
“No, I need a towel,” said Alma.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Amanda as she pulled a folded towel off the rack above the toilet. “Here.” She wiped her daughter’s eyes.
The towel was thin, rough, and stank of bleach.
“Why are you putting more water in the tub?” asked Amanda. “I thought I told you we were trying to get a move on.”
Alma looked up at her mother and said, “I don’t want to go.”
“We’ve been over this.” Amanda spread the towel out on the floor in place of a bath matt and then got another one. She was topless, wearing only her bra and a pair of jeans, and her silver necklace dangled from her neck. It was a simple chain meant to keep charms on, but Amanda only had two on it: a pair of sneakers meant to symbolize her lost son, and a slice of pie.
“I’m not going to remember,” said Alma.
“Oh yes you will,” said Amanda, her calm demeanor only a mask for her furious determination. “I know the secret now, baby. I’ve got the key.” She held out the towel for her daughter, as if welcoming the girl into an embrace.
Alma reluctantly stepped out of the tub. Her mother wrapped the towel around her tightly and began rubbing it to dry Alma off. The ten-year-old felt trapped as her mother dried her, like a fly in a web being wrapped by the spider.
Amanda led her daughter into the other room where they had slept on a single, small bed the night before. The hotel stank of cigarettes, and the carpet felt dirty on Alma’s wet feet.
“Okay, let me see your hands,” said Amanda.
Alma complied, revealing the symbol for pi on both of her palms. The bath had lightened the permanent marker.
“Let’s go ahead and do those over again,” said Amanda as she reached for her purse to get the marker.
“No, Mom,” said Alma as she pulled her hands away. “Can’t we just forget about all this? Can’t we just go home?”
“No,” said Amanda as if offended. “Absolutely not. Don’t you want to save your brother? Don’t you miss Ben?”
“I don’t know him, Mom. I told you that. How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t remember…”
Amanda slapped Alma, and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry, baby, but you know I don’t like it when you talk bad
about your brother. He meant the world to me, Alma. He meant everything.”
“Don’t I mean anything?”
Amanda glowered at the child. “Don’t you dare.”
“What?”
“Don’t you dare make me out to be the bad guy.”
“Mom, I’m not…”
“Don’t you dare!” She grabbed her daughter’s wrist and pulled the child forward. “Now open your hand before I do it for you.”
Alma kept her fingers clenched into a fist, refusing to let her mother write the symbol or the numbers down. “No!”
“You think you can fight me on this?” asked Amanda. She dragged Alma to the side of the bed and then ripped the wet towel away. Amanda smacked her daughter’s bottom and then forced her head down to the bed before doing it again. “You’re making me do this, Alma.” Amanda emptied the contents of the purse and dug out the permanent marker.
“Mom, no!” Alma pleaded and struggled, but Amanda slammed the felt tip of the marker into the child’s back as if it were a knife. Then she started to write the numbers all over her daughter’s bare flesh, stabbing the tip into her between each sequence.
314
Stab
314
Stab
314
Stab
It was as if a murderer was taking the time between attacks to write a message on her victim.
She flipped Alma onto her back as the child screamed and kicked. Amanda crawled over the girl and started to write the numbers on her chest and stomach. The marker kept slipping as Alma struggled, contorting the numbers as Amanda continued to write.
Amanda finally relented, and backed away from the bed. She stared at her nude, weeping daughter. The ten-year-old was decorated with that awful number, a sight as equally evocative as the symbol that Amanda was obsessed with. Amanda seemed devoid of shame.
She promised that this would lead them to Ben.
She promised that this was the answer.
“If you stop fighting me,” said Amanda Harper, “then you’ll stop getting hurt.”