Ben shifted nervously from one foot to the other, wracked with indecision. Patrick was right; if those emaciated man-things were still out there, there was practically no way they’d survive the night. But being inside this house was just as unsettling. “Will you sit down?” Patrick asked. “You look like you have to pee, and that makes me have to pee. And I don’t want to go pee because this couch is really comfortable.”
“Are you sure ‘cardigan wearer’ wasn’t one of the old lady’s warnings?”
“No, she never said anything about being attacked by Mr. Rogers.”
Ben sighed helplessly. “Okay. We stay here tonight, but one of us should keep watch at all times. Seriously. We can take turns sleeping.”
Once they’d said their goodnights and headed up to the guest room, they decided to rotate the watch every three hours that night, with Ben taking the first watch. The plan was successful for exactly three hours and twelve minutes, at which point Patrick lost a poorly fought battle with exhaustion and fell into something just bordering on a coma on the floor. He awoke to a not-so-soft nudge in his ribs. “Mrrwpft?” he said, bolting upright.
The little girl jumped back, startled. She wore a different colored jumper this morning, but the blouse and the ribbons were the same. “Mommy says breakfast is ready,” she whispered shyly. Then she turned and ran out of the room.
Patrick yawned and shook his head clear of its cobwebs. He reached up onto the bed and poked Ben in the forehead. “Wake up.”
Ben slowly came to, mumbling something about fig trees and popinjays. He opened his eyes and looked bewilderedly around the room. “What time is it?” he asked. The room was still dark, illuminated only by three candles on the dresser that someone had apparently lit while they were still sleeping.
“A little after six,” Pat said, checking his princess watch. “Time for some b-fast.”
“Did you keep watch all night?” Ben yawned.
“Yeah. Obviously,” Patrick lied. “You looked so peaceful, I figured I’d just let you sleep.”
“Huh. Thanks.”
Breakfast consisted of mixed Dole fruit, homemade bread, and sweet potato hash. These nutjobs set a fine table, Patrick thought.
“Think you fellas’ll stick around another night or two?” Warren asked, wiping his mouth with a neatly pressed cloth napkin. Mary shot him a look of alarm from across the table, but he gave her a reassuring wink.
“We hadn’t really thought about it,” Patrick admitted.
“We probably won’t,” Ben said. “Lots of ground to cover, and all.”
“Nonsense! Mary, what’s for dinner tonight?”
She gave him an annoyed glower, but answered, “Lentil and spinach pie.”
“Lentil and spinach pie,” Warren said, as if that settled the matter. “You don’t want to miss that. Plus, you’re in no condition to hunt your bounty right now, Patrick. Let Mary take a look at that hand of yours this morning.” He wiped his mouth and pushed his chair back from the table. “Well! I’m headed to the office.” He stood and kissed Mary on the cheek, and the children on the tops of their heads. “You two troublemakers be good for our guests now, you hear? Don’t give your mother any problems. What’re you working on today?”
“Multiplication,” William said miserably.
“States!” the girl cried.
“That’s the spirit, Lucy.” He smiled and tousled her hair, shaking a few strands free of their ribbon restraints.
“It took me twenty minutes to get her hair just so. You stop that and go to work,” Mary scowled, swatting at Warren. He grinned and danced away from her reach.
Patrick and Ben cleared their plates from the table and dumped them in the sink. “I don’t want to stay here,” Ben whispered.
“I know, Baby Ben, I know,” Patrick cooed, patting the shorter man’s head. Ben slapped his hand away.
“You two make yourselves at home today,” Warren said, placing his own dishes in the sink and straightening his thin tie. “Don’t let Mary talk you into sweeping the floors, now, you’re our guests.” He headed out into the front hall and grabbed a smart leather briefcase from beneath the entryway table. He beckoned Patrick closer. “The little lady gets a bit disquieted about strangers in the house. You two feel free to hide out in the study if things get a little uncomfortable for you,” he said.
“Sure. No problem.” They shook hands awkwardly (Patrick grabbing Warren’s right with his own left), and the master of the house unlocked the door.
“Should you really go out there?” Ben blurted.
“A man’s got to do his duty, hasn’t he?” Warren smiled, jangling his keys. “The bread doesn’t put itself on the table! Besides, it’ll be a long day in winter before a few neighborhood bullies get the best of Warren Tinder.” He gave them another wink, then pulled open the door and walked out, calling a final goodbye to the family.
Patrick held the door open behind him. “Where do you think he goes?”
Ben shrugged, but they didn’t have to wait long to find out. Warren turned off of the brick walk, in the opposite direction of the driveway. Instead of heading to the garage, he rounded the far corner of the house. Ben and Patrick exchanged confused looks, then followed him out into the yard. They peeked around the corner just as Warren disappeared down a set of steps into the house’s cellar, pulling the storm doors closed behind him.
“I don’t like this,” Ben said. “I want to leave. Today.”
Patrick admitted he might be on to something there. “Maybe that’d be best.”
Mary was waiting for them in the foyer when they returned to the house, her arms tightly crossed. “You should know the sheriff lives next door. Any sign of trouble, and he’ll come running.”
“There’s no trouble,” Patrick said. “We’re not trouble. Do you feel troubled?”
“Let’s just lay our cards on the table. I’m a woman with two children, left alone in a house with two strange, armed men. My husband seems to think there’s nothing wrong with that, God knows why. I want to make it perfectly clear that if you try to assault me or my family in any way, you’ll be in handcuffs before I finish screaming for help.”
“Well...not to split hairs here, but you’re not exactly alone in the house with us,” Patrick pointed out.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“Your husband,” Ben said, confused. “He’s downstairs.”
“Downstairs?”
“Right?” Patrick asked. “In the cellar?”
“We don’t have a cellar,” Mary said quickly. “Now, if you’re going to stay, you might as well be useful. You can bring in some firewood from the pile out back. Follow me.” She led them down the hall and around a corner, past a door secured with a padlock. Cold air drafted from beneath as they walked past. Patrick turned to Ben and mouthed, Cellar? Ben nodded.
What the hell was going on here?
They brought a few loads of firewood into the house (after cautiously inspecting the grounds for runners), then politely requested to retire to the guest room to put their things in order. Mary consented, suspiciously, and they hustled back to the room and closed the door.
Ben set right to work stuffing his blanket into his knapsack, but Patrick stood thoughtfully by the door, tapping his cheek and staring blankly into space. “What do you think he’s doing down there?” he asked.
“If Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that Warren is creating an army of self-sustaining, man-eating vampire/plant hybrids in that basement. We should get the hell out.”
“Maybe he’s conducting experiments on sedated politicians,” Patrick mused. “Or working on some sort of organic madman antidote, with beakers full of bubbling green potions.” He inhaled sharply. “Ooo! Maybe he has a Tesla coil down there!” he said excitedly.
“I don’t care if he has a petting zoo down there. I’d rather take my chances with the runners.” Ben zipped up his knapsack and slipped the wrench and the knife into his pockets. “Get your stuff together. Let’s go.” But Patrick barely heard him. He was getting that warm, tingling feeling that he always got when he was about to make an exciting decision.
“Let’s go see what’s in that basement,” he said.
Ben threw his knapsack on the ground. “You know what I hate about you the most?”
“My naturally trim physique?”
“The fact that you’re so predictably maddening.”
“So you do want to go see what’s in the cellar?”
“No, I want to leave. I want to go back into the woods because I think we’re safer with the freaking zombies than we are with these whackos. They give me the fucking creeps. I just want to go to Disney World and get done with this stupid trip and not end up being cut into pieces by Ward Cleaver.”
Patrick pressed a hand to his chest. “You think this trip is stupid?”
“Well. No. It’s actually been pretty exciting,” Ben admitted. “And I like the fact that I’m not the one with a hole in his hand. So it could be worse. But I really want to get the hell out of Stepford.”
“We will, Benny Boy, we will” Pat promised, chuffing him on the chin. “Just as soon as I find out what’s in that basement.”
•
The plan was simple; Ben would distract Mary while Patrick slipped out and tried the storm doors. If Ben was good for anything, it was a distraction, “But no fire this time,” Patrick warned.
Mary and the children were in the living room down the hall. They could hear the little girl babbling happily as the boy struggled with his numbers. “As long as they stay in the room, we’re fine,” Patrick said. “But if they come out, you go into action.”
“What sort of action?”
“Distraction action!”
“What should I do?”
“Be a master of disaster!”
“What kind of disaster?”
“The kind that stops wops!”
“They’re not Italian.”
“I know, but I had a good rhyme scheme going.”
“It was racially insensitive.”
“We live in an insensitive world,” Patrick said sadly. “Do whatever you need to do, just keep her in the house and not looking for me in it.” He strapped on the machete and gave Ben a little salute. “I go to discover the truth.”
“You go to discover your arm severed from your shoulder. If you’re not back in ten minutes, I swear to God, I’m leaving without you.”
“Better make it twenty. If there’s some sick science experiment happening down there, I’m liable to get engrossed in it.”
“You’re likely to become part of it.”
Patrick thrust a finger into the air. “Then I go for science!”
•
Ben winced as Patrick closed the front door. He was sure Mary heard the click. But the lessons continued in the room down the hall, and after counting to ten, he let himself breathe again. He looked around to make sure no one was looking, then he slipped into Warren’s study. Why he thought there might be anyone around to catch him, or why anyone might care, he couldn’t say. He just felt jittery. The Tinder family was batty, even the kids. He could’ve sworn that he’d woken up in the middle of the night to find the girl staring at them from the doorway. It had freaked him right the hell out. When he rubbed his eyes and looked again, she was gone, and it could’ve been a dream, but still. These people weren’t right.
He opened the liquor cabinet and perused the bottles. Warren might be batshit, but he had good taste in booze. He pulled out a bottle of Grey Goose and a bottle of Kahlua and set them on the bar. He poked around the lower shelves and was delighted to find a container of Coffeemate. He set to work mixing himself a White Russian. It wasn’t quite the same without ice (Definitely not a White Siberian, he cracked to himself), but, lordy, did it do the trick. He was generous with the alcohol, sure, but the real high was in the familiar comfort of the creamy drink.
He tossed it down, the whole glassful, and mixed up a second. Then he stashed the bottles back in the bar and closed it up. He wandered around the study, drink in hand, examining the carvings on the shelves. Why on Earth someone would collect so many sad-looking Indians for a personal collection was beyond him. It was like the Trail of Tears ended in Colonel Mustard’s library.
He inspected the books lining the walls, looking for some concrete evidence of mental instability, something like American Psycho, or Mein Kampf, or anything by the Marquis de Sade. He was surprised to find a host of classics, peppered with a little science fiction and a smattering of humorous essay collections, mostly from Sedaris and Burroughs. The real sick shit must be in the basement, he decided. Warren probably kept The Necronomicon down there, or the “Blood Qur’an,” or maybe both. Patrick was probably being literally eaten alive by books written in blood.
Speaking of Patrick, where the hell was he? Ben didn’t have a watch, so the twenty-minute deadline was pretty meaningless, but it had to be getting close by now. He knelt down and pressed his ear to the floor, but he couldn’t hear a single sound coming from the basement. That could be good or bad. He took another sip of his drink. As much as he wanted to get the hell out of Dodge, and as much as he would love to just grab his bag and run, he wasn’t about to leave Patrick behind. And Pat knows that, dammit. So the twenty-minute deadline was even less than meaningless.
He decided to calm his mind by doing a lap of the house. He needed to check in on the classroom anyway. He and his drink meandered out into the hall. He turned the corner and froze dead in his tracks. Mary stood just outside of the living room, her back to him. The kids were scurrying around the corner toward the kitchen. Snack time? Lunchtime?
Dammit.
He was frozen with indecision. Should he back away and slip upstairs into the guest room and hope she would just not think to bother them? Or should he take the initiative and create a diversion right now? If he did the latter, what would he say or do? His brain wasn’t working properly. It couldn’t tell him to move forward or backward, so he just stood in place. For a moment he thought maybe Mary would follow the kids and make the decision for him, but, instead, she turned around and caught him standing in awkward mid-crouch, breakfast alcohol in hand.
She gave a little gasp of surprise, then her face quickly fell to annoyance. “Do you need something?” she asked icily.
Make a diversion. Make a diversion, he thought.
He held up the White Russian. “I found this in the kids’ bedroom.”
•
Patrick crept along the front of the house, instinctively ducking as he moved past the windows, which was stupid, because they were all boarded up from the inside. He slid around the corner and approached the storm doors. He carefully reached down and pulled at one of the handles. The door raised freely an inch or two; it wasn’t locked from the inside. He set the door back down noiselessly and looked around. He was alone: no kids, no angry wife, no flesh-eating politicians. He blew in his hands to warm them. The air was cold, colder than usual, and he needed to be warm and springy in case evasive bodily maneuvering became necessary. The fingers on his right hand still felt numb, and the whole injury put him at a serious defensive disadvantage. He hopped from one foot to the other and shook out his arms. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his late wife’s whispered something about going back inside the house and forgetting about the cellar. But that voice had a way of steering him away from the more exciting things in life, so instead of heeding it, he gripped the metal handle and pulled open the door. It was dark as night in the stairwell. Patrick squatted and peered down into the cellar gloom. Dim candlelight flickered around
the walls. He stepped down onto the stairs and pulled the storm door closed behind him.
He sat on the third step for almost two whole minutes, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, he could see that the stairs led to a shallow hallway, which opened up into the main basement room. The walls were heavy stones held together by cement that was beginning to flake away, but the structure seemed sturdy on the whole. The candles were hidden from view, tucked back behind either side of the entry tunnel, but their glow flickered across the hard earthen floor. Patrick could hear Warren humming from somewhere in the darkness. He eased his way down the stairs and crept slowly along the tunnel.
He stopped at the mouth and held his breath, listening. Warren’s humming seemed to be coming from somewhere behind him, on the other side of the concrete. He crossed the tunnel and ducked around the opposite wall. He could just barely see the outline of the staircase ascending to the padlocked door in the hallway above. Why bother locking that door when the storm doors were completely unguarded? The obvious answer sent a chill through Patrick. Tinder wasn’t trying to keep people in the house out of the basement; he was trying to keep something in the basement out of the house.
The staircase bisected this half of the room. Flanking it on either side were U-shaped series of metal file cabinets. There were enough drawers to hold all the paperwork for an entire law firm, and then some. A tall candle holder stood in the middle of each section, both of them mounted with thick, squat candles that sat at eye level. He tiptoed toward the file drawers directly ahead and inspected the first tower. The labels were meaningless to him; Case #115AT Abbot – Paulson, Case #1444PO McKenney – Avondale, Case #13BSP Belmont – Luna. Carefully, quietly, he slid the button on the top drawer and pulled it open. Metal squeaked against metal. He stopped and listened. Warren still hummed, hidden, from the other side of the cellar. Patrick plucked a file from the drawer and opened it near the candle. The top piece of paper contained a poem written in hasty script:
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