Malus Domestica

  Wayne picked up the receiver and put it against his ear. No dialtone.

  He stuck his finger in the rotary dial and turned it. The earpiece made a subtle tikkatikkatikkatik sound, but nothing else happened. Listening to the faint tappling, his eyes wandered over to the left and he noticed that the front door was a different color. Wayne hung up the phone and went over to check it out, his bare feet padding on the soft, intricate runner carpet.

  The front door was white, the bottom chewed up by time and neglect, the paint coming off to uncover rusty metal. A placard in the middle said WOMEN.

  A restroom door? Wayne’s hand found his face and he rubbed his forehead in confusion.

  This was too strange. Time to get to the kitchen, get what he came for, and get back to the hospital. He would talk to Leon when he woke up later, and see what was going on, but for right now he just wanted to get something to eat and get off of his increasingly tender foot.

  Wayne limped down the dark hallway and hooked right into the kitchen, stopping short.

  A pale, dirty light filtered in through the window over the sink, like sunbeams coming through the scummy surface of a pond. This sickly glow drew the contours and corners of a black kitchen—black walls, black ceiling, the stove was black, the paint bubbling and peeling. He touched the stove, and his fingertip came away with a paste of damp soot.

  One winter when he was in…second grade(?), Wayne caught chicken pox and had to stay with his Aunt Marcelina. She’d turned on the stove to boil water for a cup of hot chocolate, but it had been the wrong eye, searing the painted tin eye-cover on top of it.

  The foul smell of burnt paint had hung in the air for weeks, like a curse on Marcelina’s apartment. This same acrid stink now lingered in the black kitchen.

  Wayne opened a few cabinets, searching for his cereal, but there was nothing in them except for canned food with old-looking labels and brand names he didn’t recognize, many of them with dented sides. The cabinet where they kept the drinking glasses had a box of cherry Pop-Tarts and a box of Life, but he didn’t like cherry and had never tried Life, so he left them alone.

  “What is goin on, man?” he asked the strange kitchen.

  The floor creaked in the living room, the slow tectonic croak of a ship’s deck.

  Wayne’s head snapped up and he fled to the other side of the table, which was not their small round wooden table, but a large Formica oval with metal trim, like something out of a diner. It was thick, and bulky, and felt protective.

  “Who’s there?”

  No answer. His heart fluttered in his chest.

  “Pete?” he asked the darkness. “Is that you?”

  Wayne stood behind the table for a long minute, waiting for a voice. None came.

  He opened the silverware drawer, found hand-towels, opened another drawer, found a jumble of random utensils. One of them was a big serrated bread knife, which he snatched up and brandished at the dark doorway next to the fridge.

  Weak ocean-floor sunlight whispered into the living room as well, bandaged by the sheer white curtains. The suggestion of a brown sofa lurked next to the rumor of a coffee table that resembled a pirate’s chest.

  Wayne chewed his cheek, eyeing a weird wooden TV with a rabbit-ear antenna and a bulging gray screen, accompanied by a panel of numbered dials. Creepy wood-framed pictures lined the walls: praying children with bulbous Casper heads and shiny blond hair, painted on black velvet.

  He leaned over and was reaching for the television’s power button when something inhaled behind him, a ragged wet grarararararuhh that made him think of engines and dragons.

  Ice raced down his legs and arms into his feet and hands, his mouth falling open in terror.

  Behind him, a mass of greasy, rumpled hair was wedged into the back corner where the watery sunlight faded into shadow. Green owl-eyes opened in a massive head that brushed the ceiling like a grown man in a child’s playhouse.

  Rarararararuhhh….

  The beast leaned away from the wall, reaching for Wayne with orangutan arms and too many fingers, smelling of filth, of old blood, of death.

  The boy ran.

  Leading out of the kitchen and out of the house, the back door was metallic gray, patchy with rust.

  A sign near the top said NO ADMITTANCE—EMPLOYEES ONLY! He shoved it open, running through it into what should have been the back yard, but was a dark indoor space swampy with the stink of old motor oil.

  Turning to face the monster, Wayne found a blank wall of corrugated aluminum.

  Tears made cold tracks down his cheeks. He ground them away with a wrist and sank to his hands and knees, shaking and nauseous. The constricting bandage around his swelling leg was killing him and his left foot buzzed with pins and needles. “What…in the world,” he asked the silence.

  Chains rattled on the other side of the wall.

  Wayne stood up. The back door of the strange green version of his house had brought him to what appeared to be some kind of mechanic’s garage, the cement floor dark and greasy under his bare feet.

  Sun-bleached kart bodies rusted quietly in the shadows, strewn with broken engine parts. Signs made out of plywood and sheet-metal leaned against the wall in piles. The first one was a menacing cartoon of a clown. VISIT HOOT’S FUNHOUSE! GET LOST IN OUR HALL OF MIRRORS!

  Another sign, this one as big as a barn door, welcomed him to Weaver’s Wonderland, and beside that was painted a picture of a mom and a dad walking into an amusement park, a little girl sitting on her father’s shoulders.

  The clanking of chains and muffled growling echoed from a black doorway.

  A huge roll-up garage door dominated one wall. Moonlight slipped underneath the bottom panel as Wayne hooked his fingers into the gap and heaved upward with everything he had.

  Clack! The door moved about an inch and ran into latches on each side. Hasps were pushed through slots in the doorframe, and padlocks were attached to the strips of metal, preventing them from being pulled out. He jerked and wrenched them, but they were brand-new and he had no chance of getting them off.

  “Grrnngh!” growled something from the other room. “Hhhngh—thp thp thp puh, puh—HELP!” Goosebumps prickled Wayne’s skin. He sidled over to the doorway and peeked inside.

  Planter hooks had been screwed into the wall by the door, stuck through the links of three chains. One of them lay useless underneath, but the other two ran across the room to ceiling pulleys.

  Men hung upside-down from them, a black guy and a white guy, both of them naked except for their skivvies.

  The one in the thong was squirming and undulating furiously, jerking on the chains binding his hands to the floor. A cloth gag dangled around his neck. “Jesus Lord help me, get me the hell out of here,” he pleaded, and noticed Wayne peering through the doorway. “Oh God, oh God, get me down, get me outta here, you gotta get me out of here, please.”

  Wayne ventured into the room. ARE YOU TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL? asked the coyote on the sign. “What’s goin on?”

  “I been kidnapped, this man has kidnapped me, I don’t know if he put something in my drink, or put something in my steak, but he knocked my ass out and when I woke up I was chained up in here and right now I need you to go over there and unhook me so I can get down and I need you to do it right now. Right now right now right now.”

  Taking hold of the chain, Wayne tried to pull the man up to give himself enough slack to pull the hook out of the link, but he was just too heavy. The gritty floor bit into the sensitive sole of his left foot.

  “I can’t do it.” Panic overtook him and he started weeping again, his throat burning. “I got bit by a snake on my foot and I’m so tired. I been in the hospital—”

  “Honey, what’s your name?” asked the man.

  “Wayne.”

  “Mine is Jo-elle. Okay, Wayne baby, Wayne, take the chain in both your hands. See how the hook curves up?” The chain had been lowered down onto the point of the hook. “I want you to take the chain in both hands a
nd push it toward the point. Can you do that?”

  Bracing himself, Wayne got under the chain and pushed. Jo-elle’s weight made it seem impossible at first, but when he put his hands close to the hook and hauled upward as hard as he could, throwing his whole body into a series of shoves, the link began to scrape free.

  The sleepy growl of a four-stroke motor grew outside the building, reminding Wayne of the golf carts the security guys drove at the mall up north.

  Jo-elle shook with fear. “Oh Jesus, hurry up, he’s back, God almighty, he’s back.”

  Shove, shove, shove. Almost there. He renewed his grip on the chain and ignored the tingling-prickling in his swollen leg. The filthy floor caked dried motor-oil between his toes.

  Tink! The chain slipped free and whipped through the pulley like slurping spaghetti, making a loud clatter. Jo-elle fell on his head, swearing in pain.

  Outside, the golf cart engine shut off.

  Jo-elle scrambled to his feet, freeing his cuffs from the hook screwed into the cement and wriggling out of the chain wrapped around his ankles. “We got to go, we got to go.”

  “What about the other guy?” Wayne asked, pointing at the man still chained to the ceiling. His bruised back was to them.

  “He’s dead, baby, there ain’t nothin we can do.” Jo-elle took off into the other room, staggering in circles and looking around wildly. “How did you get in here? Where did you come from?”

  Wayne held up his mother’s wedding band. “You’re gonna laugh at me, but I think I made a door. Or maybe I found one.”

  “You made—what?” Jo-elle winced in confusion. “You made a door? How do you ‘make’ a door?” He waved off the coming explanation. “Just show me the way out so we can get—”

  “But there’s a monster—”

  “What?”

  Keys jingling in the workshop. Door unlocking.

  “A monster in my house—” Wayne began to say, and recoiled as Jo-elle lunged for him, grabbed him by the head, and gazed into his face.

  “We got to go. We got to go now.”

  The door in the workshop opened, and someone thumped across the oily floor in boots, tossing a keychain full of keys on the worktable. Hollow thunk of some sort of plastic container. Gas can? The rattle of chains.

  A raspy voice. “Hey, how’d you get down?”

  Jo-elle ran over and slammed the door, swearing under his breath, bracing himself against it.

  The handle rattled.

  “There ain’t no way out of there, pizza-man,” said the killer’s muffled voice. “You might as well come on out. I’d lock you in there and let you starve, but I kinda need to bleed you like your buddy in here.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “Nothin personal, you know. It’s my job. Well, part of it. Blood-collecting. The people I work for, they need it for the garden. Always blood for the garden.”

  Boots scuffing on cement: the man walked away. The bump and clatter of tools being rummaged through, assembled. “It never ends, it never ends.”

  “You ain’t got to do this, Red,” said Jo-elle.

  “Sure I do.” The killer paused. “You know what? Call me the Serpent. That’s what the papers back in New York used to call me. I like it. My friends called me Snake when I was little, but ‘Serpent’ sounds so…I dunno, Biblical, doesn’t it? Man, it just rolls off the tongue.”

  Everything went quiet.

  A burst of noise came out of the door-crack as the Serpent spat a hiss through, his lips against the jamb.

  Jo-elle twitched, almost losing his leverage on the door. “You let me out, and I ain’t tell nobody, man,” he said. “I swear. You let me go and it’ll be like this never happened. We both go our own way and it’s all good.”

  The Serpent laughed. “Fat chance, homo. You’ve seen my face. Not gonna happen.”

  “Homo—?” Jo-elle’s face darkened. “You mean…?”

  “Oh hell naw. I don’t swing that way, pizza-man. You kidding me? I mean, yeah, I done some things I ain’t proud of to put food on the table, but deep down I’m as straight as a…” The killer drummed fingers on the door. “Help me out here, what’s something really straight? You know, other than ‘not you’.”

  “An arrow? I don’t—”

  “Be original!”

  Something pistoned hard against the door, BANG!, and Jo-elle jumped away. “Ow!”

  A nail protruded from the door’s surface, dripping blood. Taking advantage of the moment, the Serpent kicked the door so hard one of the plywood signs fell over. The sign behind it was a painting of a sweating glass of lemonade.

  WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS, GIVE EM BACK—OURS IS BETTER!

  Wayne pressed the gold ring to his eye.

  Adapt and overcome.

  Nothing about Jo-elle’s end of the room was special, but when he turned to the back wall, there it was again, the doorway back to the green house with the burned kitchen. Be bigger. Be stronger. He was going to have to brave that strange dark place with its giant hairy creature.

  It’s got to be better than this Serpent person. I know he’s going to kill me, but I don’t know what the monster wants. It came down to ‘the evil you know’ versus ‘the evil you don’t’. Adapt and overcome. Think. Think.

  Summoning up all the courage he could find, his body cold and trembling in deepest terror, Wayne opened the strange door. Beyond, the hollow Victorian promised nothing but darkness and silence.

  “The hell—?” Jo-elle was staring at him.

  BANG! Another nail shot through the door, appearing between his fingers as if by magic. He snatched his hand away, cursing. The Serpent gave the door another kick and it flew open squealing.

  Scooping up the boy, Jo-elle fled through the door into the Victorian. Wayne got a quick glimpse of a shock of the killer’s red hair, beady eyes, a scrawny throat, and then the door slammed shut behind them, plunging them into blue-green twilight.

  The afterimage of the killer’s face resonated in Wayne’s mental eye. Seemed so familiar…where had he seen that face before?

  Jo-elle breathed, “Where are we…?”

  They were back in the burned kitchen. Wayne pressed against the man’s clammy side, ignoring his sweatiness and the fact that all he wore was a pair of bikini underwear. Jo-elle was solidly built—if a little soft around the midsection—and that was all that mattered.

  “It’s supposed to be my house,” he explained in a pained whisper, “but for some reason it’s painted green instead of blue. And…and there’s some kind of monster in here.”

  Peeling him off, Jo-elle squinted at Wayne in flippant disbelief. “A monster?”

  “It’s big and hairy. It’s like…I guess it’s like a Bigfoot.”

  “You got a Sasquatch. In y’house.”

  “I’m not sure this is my house.” Wayne pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh, or it’s going to hear us and come after us.”

  “It is, or it isn’t. How can it be your house and not be your house?” Jo-elle blinked in recognition. “Wait. Wait. I know this house. I’ve sat at this table before. This is Annie Martine’s house. She used to babysit me and my brother when I was a little boy like you.” Now that he was out of danger, Jo-elle seemed to favor his right foot, using the kitchen counter as a crutch as he left the room.

  Out in the hallway, he supported himself on the armrest of a chair. “Yeah, this mos’ definitely Annie’s house. You mean you livin here? I didn’t even know it was still for sale. I figured it would be fallin apart by now.”

  “Is Annie Martine the witch that died here?”

  Jo-elle eyed him. “Where you hear that?”

  “My friend Pete told me.” Wayne stopped to rub his leg. The gauze wound around his left knee was so tight he couldn’t stand it, and his ankle felt plump, tender, like a big warm sausage. “He lives over in the trailer park. He said her husband pushed her down the stairs.”

  “…I don’t know if I believe in witches, but I don’t speak ill of the dead. Annie was a good woman.”


  He sat down in the chair. Wayne grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back up. “No, we can’t stay here. It’s not safe. I told you, there’s a monster here.”

  “Just let me rest f’minute. I been upside-down for like, two hours. My head is spinnin.”

  “No!”

  “Little man, just cause I’m sittin here in a clearance-rack thong don’t mean I ain’t gonna slap you. I hurt myself fallin on the floor, and you makin it worse.” Jo-elle took his hand away, rubbing his wrist.

  Wayne scowled and headed for the stairs. “Okay, then. …I’ll leave you here. You should—”

  Deep, gutteral breathing rumbled along the hallway like an engine underwater, grarararararauuuh, and the floorboards groaned.

  “You on y’own!” said Wayne, running for the foyer.

  As soon as he got there, the hulking green-eyed shadow reached out of the living room doorway with those long, hairy arms. “Oh!” shrieked Jo-elle. “What the Christ!”

  Halfway up the switchback staircase, Wayne paused to make sure he wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t, because the lamp-eyed creature was crawling up the wall and across the ceiling at him like some kind of huge horrible spider-bear. Wayne screamed and fought to get up to the second floor, slipping, clawing at the steps, banging his knees.

  Inhaling, the creature made a deep crooning foghorn noise—“Hhhrrroooohh!”—and crabbed over the edge of the landing. When Wayne reached the top of the stairs, it was already there waiting, crawling over the banister.

  “Oh!” he just had time to shout, and then the creature was on him, mumbling, wet, reeking of mold and garbage.

  The thing’s mouth widened, a pit cracking open a long head like a watermelon, and rows of slimy teeth glistened in that eerie sea-light from above. It leaned forward and took Wayne’s entire head in its jaws.

  A leathery tongue pressed against his eyebrow, hot breath washing his face.

  Clang!

  The monster straightened, growling at Jo-elle, who stood over it with the rotary-phone in one hand. “It’s for you, bitch!” He brought the phone cradle down on that shaggy head again. Clang!

  Grateful for the distraction, Wayne clambered on his hands and knees across the landing.