Silent Screaming Face

by Ben Stevens

  Vanderbilt replaced the receiver upon receiving his employee’s enthusiastic farewell – he was leaving immediately – and walked over to the Receptor.

  The head of the rat from the second experiment suddenly protruded from a patch of wall to one side of the machine, the white paint completely encasing it as it writhed and twisted in its fight to be free of the strangely fluid concrete. It was just the head, though; and this retreated back into the wall after only a few seconds.

  Vanderbilt smiled as Raymond Duskatti’s face now morphed into view, a silent scream stretching his lips before he too disappeared back into the wall.

  George Wilhelm Vanderbilt patiently awaited the arrival of Richard Myerson.

  The Mannequin

  She’d moved.

  Sure as shit she’d…

  James Robertson blinked several times, scratched the back of his head and wondered if he was going nuts.

  The cavernous store-room was situated right at the top of the shopping center. It was here that any number of things were stored, from the artificial Christmas tree that was several stories high, and required scaffolding to erect and decorate it each year, to the forty or fifty mannequins that were congregated in one corner.

  Robertson had noticed her almost immediately. She stood out, for the simple reason that she had on make-up and wore a brown wig. She was also smiling slightly, and her painted eyes seemed to follow Robertson wherever he went in this large, silent room.

  None of the other mannequins that had been placed tightly together were so instantly noticeable. They did not have painted eyes, or a wig, or that damned slight smile that seemed to…

  ‘Stop looking at me,’ said Robertson suddenly, his voice disturbing the stillness of the room. He’d been sent up here with a trolley to get a section of counter for one of the shops downstairs. Only he couldn’t find the section among all the junk that had been placed up here over the years, and this mannequin was severely freaking him out.

  He’d first noticed her earlier, when he’d been sent up here to get an ‘On Sale NOW!’ notice board. This was his second week employed at the shopping center as a temporary staff member, and (by and large) it wasn’t so bad. Poor pay – always one of the disadvantages of agency work – but he was at least able to move around, constantly being sent to get or transport something from one part of the mall to another, and the meals at the staff canteen were cheap and tasty.

  His friend Lawrence Gallagher, another agency worker, had been doing this job before. But approximately two weeks before Gallagher had just disappeared. Vanished. No one knew where he’d gone and he’d said not a thing about wanting to shoot through. He’d seemed happy enough, just another young man content to do some casual work and get enough money to be able to drink some beer and chase girls most evenings. He’d been one of Robertson’s best drinking buddies – they had a similar sort of humor – so it was fair to say that Robertson missed him quite a bit. Wished he’d get in contact, if only to say that he’d moved on someplace else but was at least all right.

  It was also fair to say that Mr. Myers – the boss at the employment agency – wasn’t quite so concerned about Gallagher’s well-being. So far as Myers was concerned, Gallagher had neither snuck off somewhere to take his own life (for reasons of depression or such), nor had he been abducted by aliens.

  To Myers, Gallagher had pulled his vanishing act purely out of spite; to try and damage the lucrative contract Myers had with the management team at the shopping mall. The team which often asked Myers to supply the mall with one, two or sometimes three or even four temporary workers.

  ‘I’m taking you off the warehouse job and assigning you to the mall,’ Mr. Myers had told Robertson in his usual dramatic fashion, making it sound as though he was being sent on some sort of SWAT mission. Robertson didn’t much care either way. Work was work, wherever he was placed. One of these days he’d quit fooling around, and would seek something more permanent – and better paid. But for now, aged only twenty-three, he wasn’t too fussed…

  Really, that mannequin was looking at him. Seriously freaking him out. He felt its eyes following him around as he searched for this bit of counter he was supposed to take down to the shop floor. He wanted to get down there as quickly as possible. To be among people, noise… To be away from this cavernous, silent room with this mannequin and its painted eyes and its smile…

  But had it really moved? That was the 64,000 dollar question right now. When Robertson had previously noticed it, the last time he’d been sent up to this store room, it had been stood in a certain way. Leaning slightly to one side, its head angled a little to the right. An elegant enough pose, on the occasions it was used to advertise clothing or such.

  But now Robertson was damn-near certain that the head was inclined in another direction and it was leaning in another way.

  Impossible. It had been placed almost directly in the centre of the other mannequins. So there would be no way of repositioning it without first having to move most of the mannequins out of the way…

  And why? For what possible reason would you want to reposition it in the first place – up here in this cavernous store-room that was entered only infrequently?

  She’d moved

  ‘She’? A minute ago he’d been thinking of it as – well, ‘it’, basically. But now ‘it’ had again become ‘she’…?

  ‘Stop staring at me, goddamn it!’ he almost shouted at the mannequin. He was stood perhaps twenty feet away from it on the whitewashed concrete floor. It – she, whatever – stared back at him, the slight smile seeming mocking but also slightly…

  Alluring?

  What the fuck? Was he starting to get the hots for a mannequin wearing a brown wig, for Christ’s sake? Sure, it had been a fair while since his last lay, but, come on…’

  ‘Would you like to fuck me?’ the mannequin said suddenly, her voice sounding low and alluring in the large room.

  ‘Shit!’ Robertson exclaimed, staggering slightly backwards in his surprise. The mannequin’s lipsticked smile became just a little larger, now exposing gleaming white teeth. Her head moved slightly to look directly at him.

  ‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ continued the mannequin. ‘Anything at all. I’m your dream woman – I never say ‘no’.’

  ‘You… I… wait…’ stammered Robinson, his mouth gaping stupidly open.

  She seemed almost to drift through the other mannequins stood between her and the young agency worker. None of these mannequins moved… yet somehow she passed through them, to now stand within a few feet of Robertson. The wig no longer seemed like a wig but like real hair. The previously painted eyes sparkled with sexual desire. She was stark naked but had absolutely no pubic hair. She held her full breasts in her hands and moaned erotically as she stared into Robertson’s eyes.

  ‘Fuck me, James, whichever way you want,’ she said, starting to walk slowly towards him. ‘Do whatever you like to me.’

  ‘How do you… how do you know my name?’ whispered Robertson, a lustful bulge showing in his jeans. Something faint whispered in the back of his mind, urging caution, telling him to run away and quickly… Then it was banished by the strong sexual instinct. He was mesmerized, hypnotized by this brown-haired, big-breasted, nude, perfect woman who was advancing steadily towards him.

  She cupped his bulge with one hand and it was his turn to moan.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll do whatever you’ve seen in those movies you watch and more… But first, a kiss…’

  Her glistening red lips battened onto his own, her tongue entering inside his mouth. Her arms wrapped around his body. It was heaven at first; then he thought… ‘Give me a minute, here… I can’t breathe…’

  He tried to pull away, gently at first but with increasing panic as he realized that she was holding him fast. He really couldn’t breathe, that tongue now seeming almost to touch the back of his throat, choking him…

  He tried to lift up his hands to her throat, to choke her or whate
ver the fuck he had to do in order to get out of this viselike grip – but it was hopeless. She now felt like hard plastic; she was hard plastic. A dummy to be sporadically placed on the shop floor. A mannequin.

  She pulled away from him and he felt a momentary relief before he realized that he couldn’t move. At all. He was frozen upright with his arms by his sides. He couldn’t even move his eyes, which saw her drift back among the mannequins, moving to where she’d been stood before. There was another mannequin beside her; and now Robertson saw (as he’d somehow been wholly unable to see before) that the face bore an uncanny resemblance to the man whom he’d replaced in this job – his missing friend, Lawrence Gallagher. And he saw that the expression in this mannequin’s face was one of frozen despair.

  He looked at the other mannequins in his direct line of sight. Now they all seemed different to him, facially-speaking, except for one thing – they all had the same expression as the mannequin which looked uncannily like Gallagher. Yes, every single one of them looked the same – expect for the mannequin that was made-up and smiling slightly, wearing a brown wig.

  Robertson couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out for help… He was absolutely immobile and incapable of producing the slightest sound.

  He heard the door to this storeroom open. There came the voices of two men talking as they entered.

  ‘…I sent him up here, least half an hour ago,’ one of the men was saying. Robinson recognized the voice of Ryan Collins, who ran the shopping center’s stock delivery department and who’d dispatched Robinson on various errands.

  ‘God knows where he’s got t– ’ Collins abruptly stopped talking; then said, ‘Now how do you reckon that mannequin got over there?’

  ‘No idea,’ said other man, whose voice Robinson didn’t recognize. ‘I’ll just stick him back.’

  Robinson was startled when, a few moments later, he was picked up and carried over to where the mannequins were assembled. He couldn’t feel anything in his body, which (he realized) was now, somehow, entirely devoid of clothing. And made of hard plastic. He was set on his feet, facing directly in the direction of the door towards which the two men were now returning.

  ‘We’ll have to get onto the agency again,’ Collins was saying. ‘Get them to send someone reliable – not like the last two jokers we’ve had.’

  ‘Reminds me of that guy who started working here a year or so back – remember he just suddenly vanished one day?’ remarked the other man. ‘Went off somewhere and didn’t even bother picking up his pay check…’

  ‘Weirdoes – the world’s full of ‘em,’ said Collins with a shrug. He let the other man leave the storage room first; and then just before he left, shutting the door behind him, he turned off the light.

  There were no windows in the storage room. It was instantly pitch-black. Robinson tried to shout – to scream – for help…

  But the sound was only in his mind…

  He sensed her giving that slight smile, stood just behind him.

  And then there was just silence, and darkness.

  The Burning House

  The large wooden house situated close to the edge of the thick forest was burning fiercely, the fire red and yellow, magnificent against the night’s dark-purple sky. Cinders erupted into the air like fireworks but fell back to Earth well short of the assembled crowd, who stood watching the flames with grim satisfaction. No attempt was being made at putting out the fire, and as the house stood on its own no other properties were in danger.

  The forest enclosed two-thirds of the village called Tisakurt, growing either side and meeting a few hundred yards behind the building that was now on fire. Seated on a fallen log just outside of the forest were a man and a woman. The woman was thin and dressed in jeans and a white shirt, watching the flames with absorption.

  A short distance away was the inn where she was currently residing. Caroline Dawes was visiting Hungary in her capacity as a freelance journalist, preparing a report on the country and its people, democracy having finally been established two years before in 1989.

  Dawes had no real interest in the man who was sat beside her, his face averted away from her own as he silently watched the burning house. He’d come from the direction of the forest five or so minutes after she’d taken a seat on the log.

  When the man finally spoke his voice was hoarse, his English heavily accented –

  ‘Many have prayed for that house to burn for years.’

  Immediately sensing an interesting and hence possibly sellable story – and hoping that the man’s explanation would provide the answer to the crowd’s obvious mood of grim satisfaction – Dawes replied, ‘Why?’

  The man sighed before replying, the sound strangely lonely, like wind blowing through the branches of an autumn-stripped tree. His face remained inclined away from the reporter as he said, ‘A couple by the name of Kronberg brought that house nearly one hundred years before and turned it into an inn.

  ‘The husband, Lazio, was a harsh man who often whipped his eldest son Nicholas for failing at school. Unable to take anymore, Nicholas finally ran away. Their only other son died fighting in the Great War, and their daughter fled to Budapest in the hope of a better life. Unfortunately she found only prostitution, drink – and ultimately death.

  ‘At the end of the Great War the couple sat down and talked. They were in trouble, for they had hardly any money and their future appeared as bleak as their present. Unlike most of their ageing neighbours they no longer had any children to care for them as they grew decrepit, for their cruelty had driven them all away. After hours of debate they could think of only one possible solution to their problem – murder for profit.

  ‘They planned everything with meticulous care, Lazio digging a long trench in the wood behind the house and filling it with quicklime. The trench was well hidden, but if anyone asked what he was doing he’d only to reply that he was planning to build an outhouse.

  ‘But people were too wrapped up in their own misfortunes to concern themselves with another’s business, and so he dug his trench of death in peace. His wife, Susi, brought some strychnine crystals, telling the uncaring shop owner that they were being troubled by wolves.

  ‘From then on, eleven of the guests who sought lodgings at the Kronberg’s inn never left again. If the guest appeared well-to-do then the Kronberg’s would give them a fine meal, and at the end of this meal a special wine would be produced, the guest gladly drinking to the health of their generous hosts. The wine didn’t do their own health any good, however, as it had been heavily laced with strychnine.’

  Dawes’ body shook slightly with both the chill of the night away from the fire and the man’s story. The gathered crowd continued to watch in silence as the flames devoured the house.

  ‘But why did they give such a meal and spend time with the guest before killing them?’ she asked softly, no longer thinking about the stiff drink and the hot shower she’d previously been looking forward to upon her return to the inn.

  She saw by an almost imperceptible movement of his thin shoulders that the man had shrugged.

  ‘Who can tell?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Certainly not me. Perhaps it was their way of atoning for what they were going to do, strange though this may sound. But anyway – they didn’t intend to murder forever, and after a few years they were sufficiently well-off to agree to seal the quick-lime pit forever after one last killing. ‘Their last ‘guest’ was a man in his early thirties, who said that he’d only recently returned from several years spent in New York conducting business, and who bore the self-satisfied air of someone who’d done well for themselves. And so his fate was sealed, as indeed the trench would be after his death.

  ‘He talked with such good humour and was so friendly that the Kronberg’s were reluctant to kill him, but his lips curled back as he tasted the ‘special’ wine he was given at the end of the meal. When he was dead the Kronberg’s searched the bags he’d left in the guest bedroom, and with shaking hands found that they wer
e full of money. They were rich beyond even their wildest dreams.

  ‘But then they found something else: a photo of themselves. And only now did they realise that the genial man who’d insisted that he be called ‘Lucky’ was actually their eldest son Nicholas, who’d run away years before. They found papers in the dead man’s jacket confirming this name, and noticed a scar on his forehead that the boy had received from one of his father’s many beatings.

  ‘This was all too much for the elderly couple: overcome with remorse they sat with their dead guest at the dinner table, wrote a note confessing what they’d done, and drank the lethal wine themselves.’

  The reason behind the crowd’s mood was now obvious to Dawes, who shivered violently and rubbed her arms. She shared the gathered locals’ satisfaction as one side of the house collapsed with a great cracking noise, the burning roof consequently slipping down. As the man momentarily turned his face towards her a sudden wind blew his curly black hair back from his forehead and he smiled sadly, the blazing fire illuminating his pinched and sallow face.

  Looking back at the house he said, ‘During the years that followed the house was frequently bought and frequently sold, never staying with an owner for very long for always they complained of a vision of thirteen people seated around a dining table, all with the same horrible grin fixed upon their decaying faces. The house fell into ruin during the 60s, and now it is burning to the ground. The town, and perhaps those who were murdered, are finally free of the Kronberg’s legacy.’

  Turning away from the man and the burning house, Dawes searched for her cigarettes in the handbag she’d placed next to her on the fallen log. Only now, as she located her cigarettes and so felt for a lighter, did she abstractly consider the man’s strange attire.

  He wasn’t dressed in a modern fashion – not unusual for this area, but the appearance was oddly reminiscent of the 1920s. When he’d faced her his expression had been a little tragic, and when the flames from the house had momentarily burned more viciously they’d highlighted a long white scar on his forehead.