Westport

by James Bierce

  When they reach the house, Matt ducks behind an old half-painted rocking bench that looks as though it hasn't been used in years, then makes room for his mother. After making sure they haven't been followed, Sarah reaches up and tries turning the door handle, hoping that its unlocked like so many other homes they've been to over the last two days. When she finds that isn't the case, she starts to move across the covered deck to make her way to the front, motioning for Matt to follow — but just as she steps away, she hears a clicking sound coming from the door, followed by squeaking hinges as the heavy wooden door slowly opens. She looks at Matt, then at the beach, where she can see the hazy outline of people making their way across the dunes.

  "What do you think, should we risk it?" she asks Matt.

  "You should get the gun out first."

  With the gun held behind her back, she slips through the doorway and into a large living room. The temperature inside is surprisingly warm, and then she spots the small wood stove crackling in the far corner. The room is also heavily decorated in a nautical theme, complete with glass floats on the coffee table, netting on the walls, and even an anchor hanging precariously over the couch — an oddly dangerous place to put one, Sarah can't help but think. It would be cozy other than the fact that something smells horrible, something that Sarah can't quite place through the array of other scents assaulting her senses. Its not the woodsmoke, or extensive amount of perfume that seems to be coming from everywhere — this is something foul. Whatever it is, its strong enough to nearly send her running back outside just to get away from it. What she doesn't see, or hear, is the person that unlocked the door for them.

  As soon as Matt enters, she shuts the door behind them, once again immersing the room in nearly total darkness — the only light coming from the dim flames of the wood stove. Making sure that the blinds on the windows are sufficiently tight, she turns her flashlight on and looks around the room — but she still doesn't see anyone.

  "Hello? Is anyone here?" she says in a normal volume, but still nothing. "Thank you for letting us in. We don't mean to intrude, we just wanted to stay for a little while..." Matt steps casually into the room a couple of steps, but Sarah pushes him next to the door again, shaking her head at him.

  "Were you followed?" comes a voice from somewhere in the room. It sounds like a woman, but her voice is slightly raspy.

  "No, but there are people on the beach." answers Sarah.

  "You can stay for a while, but you have to turn your light out first."

  "I'm not sure that I'm comfortable doing that."

  "I can light a candle if it makes you feel better — but no flashlights."

  Sarah considers arguing with her, but this is her house, and the woman certainly doesn't sound like the others they've come across. Instead, she shuts off her light as the woman requested, knowing that if she keeps her talking she can still track her location in the room.

  "Are you alone in here?" Sarah asks her.

  "Just me and my husband." the woman replies from across the room.

  "Oh, I hope we didn't wake you up... I know its late."

  "No trouble at all. I was still up myself." Sarah hears drawers opening and closing, this time coming from the next room.

  "Its quite a storm we're..." Sarah stops mid-sentence as the woman enters the room from the kitchen, holding two candlesticks, each one holding three burning candles. She's older than Sarah pictured her. If she had to guess, she'd probably say she was in her mid-eighties to ninety, but its hard to tell in the dim lighting.

  "Come in and sit for a while. You can hang your coats up by the door." she says in a grandmotherly tone.

  Sarah slips the gun into the pocket of her parka, then moves cautiously into the room, keeping a close eye on the woman as Matt and her sit down on a couch near the wood stove. The woman sets both candlesticks down on the table in front of them, and then stands on the other side and looks the two of them over. Sarah can't help but notice that her clothes are filthy.

  "You don't want to take off your coats? They look like they're soaking wet..."

  "Thank you, but we'd rather keep them on if its okay with you."

  The woman looks at her suspiciously, and then a warm smile suddenly comes across her face as she sits down in a badly worn-out chair that faces them.

  "As long as you're comfortable."

  The next several seconds feel like hours as the three of them sit in an awkward silence. Sarah wonders to herself what exactly is appropriate to talk about in a situation like this.

  "Where are the two of you from?" the woman asks, breaking the silence. "I haven't seen you around before..."

  "We're from Portland. We moved here a couple of weeks ago."

  "My husband was originally from Portland, lovely city."

  "Is your husband asleep? I don't want to wake him up."

  The woman gives her another warm smile. "So its just the two of you, all by yourselves out here?"

  Sarah can't help but feel that she's avoiding the question, and just before she asks the question again, it finally dawns on her what the smell is that's permeating the house — someone in the house is dead.

  "My husband is back at the house with our other son." Sarah replies. She smiles at the woman, then reaches into her pocket and grips the gun in her hand, just in case. "Are you doing okay here? Do you still have food?"

  The woman laughs. Its a soft, kind-hearted laugh, but its followed by a weak cough that sends chills up Sarah's spine.

  "What a strange question to ask... Of course I have food." the woman answers. "Why on earth would you ask me that?"

  Sarah hesitates, not sure of how to respond. "I uh... you know, considering what its like in town... I just figured you might be running low, that's all."

  "Oh, what's going on in town?" she asks innocently.

  Sarah glances over at Matt, who's looking at the woman with the same level of skepticism as she feels.

  "We really should get going, I'm sure my husband is probably worried sick by now." Sarah stands up and starts to step away from the couch, with Matt right behind her. "Thank you so much for letting us in."

  With a scowl on her face, the woman stands up out of her chair, blocking the only clear pathway to the door. The only other way out is to jump over the couch and the table that sits behind it, something that Sarah briefly considers.

  "Let me get the door for you." the woman says. The smile returns, but its different somehow. Her eyes have a wicked glint in them, like she knows that something horrible is about to happen.

  She walks to the door slowly, her steps frail and unbalanced. Sarah is hoping that its due to her age and not the illness, but she has her doubts. When she finally gets to the door, she places her hand on the knob and pauses, then reaches up to the deadbolt and locks it.

  Sarah immediately takes a quick step back and pulls the gun out of her pocket — but instead of aiming it, she keeps it at her side, hoping that the woman is simply confused.

  "Ma'am, I think you just locked the door..."

  At first she doesn't respond, she just stands there looking at the doorknob — then she turns around and looks at Sarah, her smile even more evil than before.

  "I wish you wouldn't go, you only just got here..." Her voice is still pleasant sounding, even charming.

  "We can come back soon, but we have to get home before it gets too late."

  "I'm afraid that's not going to happen, dear."

  Sarah aims the gun at the woman's head and cocks the hammer, bracing her feet against the floor just as Curtis showed her.

  "Open the door, now!" she yells at the woman.

  The woman looks at her with a confused look, then begins walking toward them in small, delicate steps.

  "Don't come any closer!" Sarah screams at her, taking another step back.

  "Mom, shoot her!" Matt yells.

  Before Sarah can react, the woman lunges forward with surprising speed and throws her hand at Sarah, hitting her first in the leg, and then
in the arm that's carrying the gun. The blows were thrown so hard that the woman ends up falling to the floor, landing flat on her back.

  Initially Sarah thinks the woman merely smacked her, and then she notices the blood running down her arm. Its only then that she looks down and spots the knife in the woman's hand.

  "Mom, the gun!" Matt yells, pointing to the floor.

  She scans the floor, looking for a gun that the woman must have dropped — but its not the woman's gun that she sees, its her own. She must have dropped it somehow in the attack without realizing it. When the woman sees it herself, she reaches out for it — but Sarah is able to kick it away just in time, sending it gliding across the hardwood and underneath a dresser on the other side of the room.

  The old woman is now furious, slashing at Sarah with the knife as she attempts to stand-up. As Matt chases after the gun by jumping over the couch, Sarah picks up a large picture book off the coffee table and smashes it over the woman's head, knocking her out instantly. When she looks up, she sees Matt standing on the other side of the woman with tears running down his face, and the gun aimed squarely at the woman's head.

  "Matt, don't!"

  "Why not? She tried to kill you!"

  "I know, but you can't shoot her, it'll make too much noise. Give me the gun..."

  He keeps his distance from the woman as he walks around her, and then hands the gun back to Sarah. After taking it, she aims it at the woman's head herself.

  "Go see if you can find something we can tie her up with."

  "Why don't we just leave?"

  "I don't think we can. I can hardly feel my leg."

  Matt had already seen his mom's bleeding arm, but in all the chaos and confusion he'd somehow missed the gash right below her knee, a cut that was now spilling blood down the front of her jeans and onto the floor. With a new sense of desperation, he makes his way toward the kitchen, a feeling of determination building inside of him as he passes in front of the hallway beside the kitchen — and then he stops.

  "What's wrong?" asks Sarah.

  "I thought I heard something."

  And then she hears it too.

  A thump.

  Coming from down the hall.

  After a night of shivering and numbness from the cold, damp air and wet clothes that cover his body, Curtis starts to feel a little better now that he's walking down the highway in the direction of town.

  He'd searched every foot of the pathway leading back to the hotel, and then backtracked and followed yet another trail that twisted through a narrow forest of thick, overgrown shrubs and trees — eventually making his way back to the highway only a couple of blocks from the Regency. Throughout all of that searching, he never found a single trace of Ben.

  As deeply concerning as all of that is, he considers his newly found comfort level just as troubling. There's no logical reason for him to feel warm, not on a night like this, and certainly not when you're soaking wet and wearing nothing but a tee-shirt and jeans. He knows that he's developing hypothermia, and if he doesn't find a place to dry off soon, his search for Ben could very well end with his body lying in a mud puddle or leaned up against a building in the middle of town. He can't let something like that happen, not as long as his wife and sons are still at risk.

  He keeps to the other side of the road as he passes by the front entrance of the hotel, trying to stay in the shadows of the towering fir trees overhead. At least a dozen people are still outside, most of them still staring through the windows as they slam their fists against the glass — all of this despite the front door sitting wide-open for all to see.

  Madness has taken every last one of them, and for a moment he wonders if the same thing will eventually happen to his own family — their minds slowly slipping away, pushing away what little sanity is still left. These people have become something less than human, less than even wild animals.

  As he tries to shake the thought from his mind, he finds himself standing once again in the middle of Forrest Street with the center of town directly in front of him, unsure of where to go or what to do first. The fact that he's standing in plain view of everyone in town doesn't even cross his mind.

  Walking down the road, his arms crossed to preserve what little heat he has left, he starts yelling out for Ben, not caring if anybody else hears him or not. And then he sees something, a flash of movement coming from an alley beside a local tavern. He stops and watches the alley, calling out for Ben at the top of his lungs before heading in that direction, his legs beginning to buckle from the lack of blood-flow to his nerves.

  He gets almost to the front steps of the tavern before he realizes that the movement he saw didn't actually come from his son, but from a young man in his teens or early twenties instead. The look in his eyes and the expression on his face are just like the others Curtis has seen, cold and vacant, but somehow filled with hate at the same time. As the man begins walking toward him, Curtis hears the sound of rustling leaves and crunching gravel coming from behind him. Turning around, he can see dozens of people emerging from the storefronts and alleyways up and down Forrest Street, all of them with the same bloodthirsty look, and every one of them drawing closer.

  Although they're approaching him from seemingly every angle, none of them are moving with any sense of urgency or speed. Seeing only one graveled side street with nobody in it, Curtis takes off in an uncoordinated run that still manages to out-pace the people following him.

  The street, which is little more than an unpaved alley, is also covered in darkness, shadowed by the old brick buildings on either side of it. Deep potholes and standing water from the rain earlier in the night cover at least half of its surface. Even though Curtis can't see anything through the obscurity of fog behind him, he can hear the crunching of footsteps over loose gravel as the people move closer.

  "Over here..." someone whispers from the shadows to his right.

  Worried that the mob behind him might soon catch up, and knowing that none of the people he's encountered so far seem capable of talking, he decides to take his chances by following the voice. Walking in silence, he can hear their faint footsteps as they lead him to an unmarked doorway that's been left open just a crack. Before entering, he takes one last look behind him, where he can barely make out a stream of featureless silhouettes only twenty feet away. All of them are passing by without a glance.

  Once he steps inside the building, the door slowly creaks shut again, engulfing the room in total darkness.

  "Who's there?" Curtis calls out.

  "Shh, they'll hear you..." comes a small, frail voice. It sounds like the voice of a child.

  They both keep quiet for a few minutes as the mob passes by outside the door. Curtis doesn't really know what to expect from whoever he's standing next to, but whoever they are, he's glad they cared enough to risk their life for him. He can't say that he would've done the same thing if the roles were reversed.

  "Okay, I think its safe again." the voice says.

  "Can I turn my light on?"

  "Not here, come with me..."

  He feels a small, warm hand grasp his own, pulling him farther into the room and then down a long, dimly lit corridor. As they pass by the rooms on either side, each of them looking like sparsely decorated bedrooms, Curtis suddenly knows where he's at. This building was once used as a sanitarium during the smallpox and Spanish flu outbreaks almost a century ago. After that it sat abandoned for decades, serving only as a tourist attraction for the few people that enjoyed seeing such things. Curtis remembers taking the tour as a kid with his father, but it looks different somehow, like people had actually started living here again.

  Curtis can tell that whoever is guiding him is short, and probably quite young. When they reach the end of the hallway, they stop and turn around, letting go of his hand as soon as they do. "Okay, we're safe here. You can turn on your light."

  When he does, the first thing that he sees is the reflection coming from a large butcher knife, the handle of which is he
ld tightly in the hand of a young girl standing in front of him. She's wearing an unbuttoned black winter coat over a heavily-stained white laced dress that looks like it could be homemade — and her long black hair almost covers her entire face. On the side of her cheek, just under her left ear, is what appears to be a spot of dried blood. When he glances down at the knife in her hand, he sees the same thing covering most of the blade.

  "How old are you?" he asks her.

  "Twelve."

  "Are your mom and dad around?"

  She hangs her head slightly, then shakes it. When she looks up at him again, she speaks to him so softly that he can barely understand what she's saying. "You look cold..."

  Curtis smiles. "Yes, I am cold."

  "I saw clothes in some of the drawers..." she points inside the closest room, where Curtis spots a small upright dresser beside the bunk-beds.

  "Thanks. I'm Curtis by the way." He holds out his hand.

  "I'm Amanda." she answers back, shaking his hand.

  As Curtis sits on the edge of a bed with a blanket wrapped around his otherwise naked body, Amanda is busy digging through the dressers of the various rooms, piling items of clothing onto the mattress next to him. He's trying his best not to fall asleep — but between the warmth of the room, the hypothermia he's still suffering from, and the almost complete lack of sleep he's had over the past few days, he's finding it more and more difficult not to lay his head on the pillow next to him and crash for a day or two.

  Determined to stay awake, he decides to focus on what to change into from the mountain of clothing options laying beside him. As he starts picking through them one by one, he discovers that every single piece belongs to women. Not one mens shirt, jeans or underwear is anywhere to be found.

  Then he remembers.

  Last time he was in town, which was a few years back, he'd noticed that the building had been converted into a home for battered women. A fitting purpose for a building that had seen its fair share of unfortunate souls cross its threshold.