by Eve Langlais
Every single door we passed worked by fingerprint scan. No cards or keys. It made me wonder how anyone would escape.
And why such strict security? These were people with mental issues. Not serial killers.
Or were they? I hadn’t yet seen Mr. Peabody’s garden. I wondered how his flowers grew.
I couldn’t remember if it was a movie or documentary that told me decomposing bodies made the best fertilizer. But if I saw an unusually lush lawn or plants when I did visit his home, I planned to dig.
The room I entered closely resembled my idea of an asylum common area. I almost clapped my hands in delight. The vast room had a wall of windows, each one caged by metal bars, and a tiled floor in a green-and-white-checkered pattern, spanning a good twenty by thirty feet at least. A good-sized space.
The room appeared divided into different areas of interest from a comfy side with a couch and chairs, to a section with tables and plastic chairs—chained to the floor, spoiling any possible fight. Board games and cards littered the tabletops.
A large desk holding a partially completed puzzle and loose pieces sat by a window. In another corner, an area with a few easels and stools for the artistically inclined.
I rather liked the piece of art sketched in dark charcoal of a stick man holding a head dripping blue and green.
The communal area held at least a dozen or more patients, all of them wearing plain garments, track suits for the most part, although a few did wander around in robes. The hues ranged from a light green, pale yellow, or white to the most common gray with hints of past color.
Over by a drawing easel, Mr. Peabody wore a tracksuit, the loose material bulking his slim frame. He leaned forward, sketching furiously, and I snuck up behind him to take a peek.
“Dude, are those eyes?” Jumping from the canvas, the surface streaked and whorled in black, he’d drawn two giant yellow orbs.
“The darkness watches,” he muttered aloud.
“Watches what? Prime time? CNN? Riverdale?” My new addiction, mostly because of a certain hottie with red hair.
“He watches for the sign.”
“Sign of what? Are we talking candle in the window? Phase of the moon?” I hated it when people only uttered half an answer, especially when I was eavesdropping. How was I supposed to know when Ted claimed he was cheating that it wasn’t on his boyfriend Brian in accounting but on his diet?
I perched on a stool alongside Mr. Peabody.
“Hey, Mr. Peabody, I’m Brenda.” I held out my hand, which went ignored, but I excused him the poor manners. After all, he was crazy.
Tucking my hands in my lap, I resisted the urge to grab a crayon and give the eyes in his drawing long and luscious eyelashes.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here. I’m helping Chloe with your case.” When he didn’t reply, I slapped myself, then hoped no one had seen it lest they think I was nuts, too. “I guess you don’t know her by her first name. I work for Ms. Bailey, your lawyer.”
“Has she napalmed the house yet?” He craned his head to ask me, and I got the full force of Peabody’s gaze.
Washed-out blue eyes that didn’t quite focus on me or anything else in this reality, I’d wager. Under the fluorescent lights, his pallid skin appeared gray, and his teeth yellow.
“About the house, we have some questions first before we demolish the place. Let’s start at the beginning.”
“More questions?” Peabody sighed as he turned the paper he’d drawn on over the top and prepared to work on a new masterpiece. “If you must.”
Easy peasy. I pulled out my notepad to take notes. “When exactly did you move into your house?”
“Fifteen years ago. We bought it just before the birth of our son. Marcus. He plays football, you know.”
I didn’t know. I didn’t care. But I played nice. “According to the bank, you still owe about twenty years on the mortgage.”
“We refinanced.”
I made a noise as I scribbled. “What do you do for work?”
“I’m a manager for a shoe store.”
“Appalling.” Not the job, the fact that a man who worked in a shoe store now had to wear paper slippers. “Do you like your job?”
“What does that have to do with my evil house?”
“Nothing, but now I feel like I should ask, was your house always evil?”
His lips pursed. “Like I told Ms. Bailey, the incidents only started about two months ago.”
“What kinds of incidents? What was the first thing you noticed?”
“The cockroaches in the basement.”
Gross, but not exactly supernatural. “Did you call an exterminator?”
“I did. And we solved that problem, only to run into another. A crack appeared.”
“A crack leading to a Hell dimension?”
“No, a crack in the foundation. It cost me almost ten grand to get it fixed.” Mr. Peabody frowned. “And then they refused to repair it under warranty when the crack reappeared less than two weeks later. Claimed my house wasn’t sitting on a solid foundation.”
“Because you’re actually sitting atop an ancient graveyard?”
“What?” His eyes widened. “No. The house was built atop a marsh that they filled in. Not very well, I might add. It’s slowly sinking. But that’s not why the lights started flickering.”
The more Mr. Peabody talked, the more I wondered if Chloe had it wrong. Sounded like an old house with problems.
“Nothing an electrician couldn’t fix. I have to say, you’re disappointing me so far.” I tucked my hands over my notepad.
“You think I’m crazy. All of you do.” He stared around suspiciously. “But I’m not. I knew there was something evil going on when stuff started disappearing.”
“What disappeared? Family pet? Small child?”
“No, nothing like that. Jewelry. Electronics. ”
Like I hadn’t heard that before. “Does your son do drugs?” I didn’t sugarcoat it. Parents in denial needed a wake-up call.
“If you’re suggesting Marcus pawned our things, then you’re wrong. My son wasn’t behind it. And even he wouldn’t have been able to make our dining room set disappear in the middle of the night.”
I doubted very many drug dealers would take bulky furniture in payment. Then again… “Where do think the stuff went?”
Thin shoulders lifted and fell. “Who knows, I never saw any of it again. When I woke one morning to find all the carpeting gone, I knew it was time to get some help.”
Disappearing carpets? Now we were talking. “That’s when you called the priest.”
“No, I invested in cameras. When they failed to record anything, even the night the stove disappeared—”
“Hold on a second. Surely your equipment saw something.”
He shook his head. “The videos showed the cameras started recording fine, then at one point during the night, the recordings went blank.”
“Like fuzzy snow blank or the kind that turns into a little girl crawling out of a well coming for you?” That spooky movie was why I’d taken a hammer to my VHS player and all my tapes. The vodka and the match were what got me a visit from those cute firemen.
“The video feed was blank. Every single one of them. That’s when I called the priest.”
Finally, the meaty part of his tale. “What kind of priest?”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“What kind? Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim… I mean, there’s like a shit-ton of choices these days when it comes to religion.”
“I called the Catholic Church, as they are usually the most equipped to deal with these kinds of evil hauntings.”
“So the priest arrived, and then what? He walked through the front door, and the house gulped him down?”
A shake of his head.
“He threw around some holy water, and the floor opened up to swallow him?”
An irritated crease of his brow and a sharp, “No!”
My imagination had
plenty more to offer. “He leaned against a wall, and whoops, got sucked in?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see what happened. All I know is he went into the house and never came out.”
That was Peabody’s proof? Thin even by my low standards. “So you don’t actually know for sure the house ate him?”
“What else could have happened?”
“Maybe he decided a change of career was in order, but he didn’t want to deal with the paperwork, so he sneaked out your back door, switching out his clothes on the way, hopped the fence, and hitched a ride to Texas to become a cowboy.”
Mr. Peabody blinked. Amazed at the possibility he’d overlooked.
“And they think I’m crazy,” he muttered.
“Speaking of crazy, according to the police report and what you told my boss, you have this theory your family is possessed.”
“It’s not a theory. They are possessed.” He practically spat the word, and some of the insanity began to creep back into his gaze.
“What makes you think they’re being ridden by a spectral parasite? Are they glowing in the dark? Measuring sub-human body temperature? Floating off the floor? Crawling out of wells?” I was on a roll, and Mr. Peabody just kept shaking his head. “Crab-walking across ceilings? Spinning their heads? Spewing wasps from their mouth?”
“No. No. And no.” He got quite loud.
How rude. I was simply trying to get to the truth.
“If there were no outward signs, then how did you know they were possessed?”
“Because they claimed to not see a thing.”
I blinked a few times as I digested this. “What do you mean they didn’t see a thing?”
“I mean, they claimed the dining room set was still there. That nothing was missing. They even claimed the priest never came to our house. Obviously, their minds are being manipulated.”
“Obviously.” I snapped my notebook shut and tucked my crayon in the coat pocket—because the receptionist had confiscated my lovely ballpoint pen. Apparently, it could be used as a weapon. I kind of wanted it right now to stab myself with for having wasted a lovely Saturday morning.
I rose from my perch.
“Where are you going?” he cried.
“Away. I can see you’re exactly where you should be. I should have talked to your family first.”
“Stay away from them. They’re dangerous. Evil.”
“They’re not the ones locked up in here.”
“You have to believe me. It’s the house. It’s behind everything. You need to burn it down. All of it.”
“By all of it, are you including your supposedly possessed family?”
At that, his face crumpled. “No. Spare them. Maybe if the house is gone, they’ll return to themselves.”
Or maybe with crazy Daddy gone, they’d get a chance at a normal life.
Despite what Chloe thought, I doubted Mr. Peabody’s house was haunted. The more likely scenario was that the home found itself in need of major renovation, and Peabody snapped when he found out his wife had cheated on him with the general contractor.
My job done here, I stood, and because I couldn’t help my curiosity, I stripped off the coat, revealing my splendid red outfit.
A hush fell over the room. A seriously awesome quiet as everyone admired my sleek style.
Peabody’s eyes grew huge. So big I thought they might fall out of his face. His mouth opened so wide I wondered if his jaw was double hinged.
The screaming started, a fire engine wail pouring from his gaping mouth.
No big deal. I’d made men scream before.
What had me gaping was the fact that Mr. Peabody floated off the floor!
6
There are many things a girl should do when confronted with a man who kept screaming without taking a breath as he floated about two feet off the floor.
Pretty sure clapping wasn’t one of them.
Still, it was a pretty epic moment. I couldn’t help but stare and slap my hands together. I did, however, restrain myself from shouting, “Bravo” and “About time.”
And the show wasn’t done!
Peabody’s entire body arched, bowing to the point that things snapped, crackled, and popped. The entire room vibrated, and a strange breeze brushed past my cheek, lifting my hair and bringing a sulfuric stench. The asylum ventilation system needed some maintenance.
“You.” A finger pointed.
“Me?” I mouthed, bringing my hands to my chest.
“You smell tasty.” His head cocked, and he licked his lips.
“Thank you.” I couldn’t recall the name of the perfume, but it didn’t cost me much from the vendor on the street.
“Good enough to eat.”
Finally, someone paying me attention. Alas, I didn’t find myself interested. “Thanks, but no thanks. I draw the line at married dudes in asylums.”
“Silence!”
The proclamation came with a punch of air that hit me and carried me across the room to smack into something hard.
“Oomph,” said the wall, who stopped my flight. It also grabbed and held me. Not the wall, but someone.
Someone who smelled like Old Spice.
A man.
But not just any man. One that I knew.
Peeking over my shoulder, I managed a smile at Mike. “Well, if isn’t Mr. Grumpy. Fancy meeting you he-r-r-e.” The word screeched out of me as the fist of air grabbed me and dragged me away from Mike to the center of the room, where it held me suspended.
Despite what you might think, an air mattress really wasn’t as comfortable as memory foam. I also didn’t care for the floor show, which, in this case, was a ceiling show.
Mr. Peabody might not have seen his family crabbing across the ceiling, but he certainly could. Looking rather disjointed, he moved, defying gravity while I gaped.
Mostly in excitement because, hot damn, Peabody had actually told the truth. Kind of. He was the one possessed!
Oh, and his crazy haunted ass was after me, which sounded more fun in theory than reality.
“Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell some blood.”
It didn’t rhyme at the end, but I got the gist. It wasn’t good for me.
“Strip!” a man yelled.
Finally, Mike showed an interest in me. A little bit too late.
“Sorry, Grumpy, but I don’t think now’s the time to get intimately acquainted.”
Peabody scuttled closer, and it was shiver-inducing. Despite what the movies showed, in this case, not even a certain red and blue spider costume would make him hot.
Peabody, his eyes completely white, stared at me. A tongue, fat and purple, whipped out to lick his stretched lips. As drool began to pool from Peabody, I cringed.
Spit and other bodily fluids should only be seen during sex.
“Shut up for once and listen to me,” Mike said from somewhere below me. “Red sets him off. Try removing it. Maybe that will help veer his attention.”
Figured Mike asked me to get naked for a practical reason and not a carnal one.
Still, his idea had merit.
I began to strip, shrugging off my coat, with Mike muttering, “Can’t you undress faster?”
“Maybe if I had some help,” I grumbled, giving up on the buttons for my blouse and yanking, popping them with little pings.
The blouse came off and fluttered down, and I noted Peabody’s gaze bouncing between the tossed shirt and me. More specifically, what I wore below the waist.
Before I could tackle my skirt, Peabody hovered over me, his head bent at a freakishly inhuman angle.
“Lunch time,” he sang.
Fuck the horror movies and being brave.
I screamed like a girl, not as good as Jamie Lee Curtis in Prom Night, but it was close.
Peabody began to drop, floating closer and closer.
I tried to swim away from him, but I couldn’t get traction in midair.
“Yummy, yummy, in my tummy.” Peabody’s voice sang the ditty ov
er and over.
I heard the screech of metal on the floor. A moment later, someone grabbed my arm and yanked. The air fist holding me aloft popped, and I was pulled into the arms of a man standing on a chair.
A chair that fell over with our combined weight so that I tumbled atop my rescuer.
Mike.
I smiled. “Hey, good looking, what’s cooking?”
“Move!” he yelled before tossing me to the side.
I rolled a few times before coming to a stop. Pushing myself up on my elbows, I peeked and saw Mike, dressed in plain trousers and a white shirt grappling with Peabody.
Actually, it was less wrestling and more holding Peabody still. The crazy man’s eyes were fixated on me. Not my almost naked boobs in their demi-cup bra but my bottom half.
My red skirt.
I scrambled to my feet and did a shimmy. My hands trembled as I pushed at my skirt, dropping the red fabric in a puddle on the floor then dashing away from it.
Mr. Peabody burst free from Mike and leaped at the skirt, pouncing on it and tearing it to shreds.
Only when he’d reduced it back to the thread it began life as did he stop. Scooting over to his easel, Peabody perched on it, a vulture with a black crayon drawing big, angry circles.
As for me, I stood in my matching underwear—slutty black lace, not red—the focus of everyone’s attention.
Including Mike’s.
But his gaze didn’t admire. Not according to the giant scowl on his face and his barked, “Put this on and come with me.”
Mike Interlude
What the fuck is she doing here?
When the commotion started, people running down the hall yelling, an alarm going off, Mike had immediately headed to the common room following the foot traffic. What he’d not expected to see, or get hit with, the moment he walked in the door was an itty-bitty woman wearing red.
The red clothes were gone now, and he’d seen more than he needed.
More than he could forget.
“Who the hell let you in here?” he snapped, his grip tight on Brenda’s arm, the fabric of the white coat he’d forced on her keeping him from touching skin.
Too late to save him. The vision of her standing in only her panties and bra had burnt itself on his retinas.