The nurse that had been tucked away within her for years explained to Alice, as calmly as she could that her lungs weren’t working properly. I got that much. And that because they weren’t drawing air at maximum efficiency, her blood was not being oxygenated enough, and her brain wasn’t receiving the oxygen it needed. Her thinking was being muddled by emotion and the lack of oxygen was making it worse. I have to slow my breathing. If I can’t slow my breathing, I’m going to black out.
Easier said than done. Alice was trying hard to listen to the small sane voice inside her, but being buried alive was very distracting. Alice tried to focus on taking slow shallow breaths, trying to teach her lungs to accept the shortened breaths. She almost had it under control, almost, until he began to speak again. Alice could no longer turn her head. She was buried to the neck, so Francis came and lowered himself down into an awkward squat in front of her. The smell of his body was sharp and thick. His chest was beaded with sweat, which ran off him in strange patterns due to the twisted scar tissue that covered half of his body.
“You’re all set here.” He was a little out of breath, but his voice was light, in fact it sounded happy. Francis looked around the yard. “She’s nearby I think. I can feel her.”
“What are you going to do to her?” Alice’s voice was not much more than a whisper now, but she managed to squeak the words out.
Francis cocked his head at Alice curiously. “What am I going to do to her?” His eyes turned angry, and his hand shot out and caught a handful of her hair. He gripped it tightly and pulled her head backwards.
“Once you are gone, I am going to love her! I am going to marry her! We will have a proper family, not this charade of a life you tricked her into!”
“I never tricked her into anything,” Alice cried in a soft voice.
“Once you are gone, I will make her happy.” With that Francis stood. “I expect her soon, so I need to get ready. You should make yourself ready too.”
With that, Francis stood and walked away, continuing his strange song.
“Tip toe from your pillow
To the shadow of a willow tree
And tip toe through the tulips with me
Just me dear
In flowers we'll stray
And we'll keep the April showers away”
Alice watched him as he walked out of her range of vision. She was choking on her tears now, barely able to breathe enough even to cry properly. She fought against the blackness that was threatening to consume her, mentally and physically. Help me Dee, help me.
*****
The air in the meat room was cold and thick with death. As the steel door closed behind her, Delia shivered and felt goose bumps rise up on her skin. From metal hooks all around her hung the butchered bodies of cows and pigs. Delia thought she saw what looked like a horse hanging in the center of the room. Who would eat a horse? Many people would, she supposed, if they were hungry enough.
Just the thought of the meat room was disturbing, and now being in it, Delia was more than a little uncomfortable. Every step she took seemed to bring her into contact with another cold piece of meat, but she had no choice but to keep moving forward. She had to put the feminine Delia she had become in her adult life aside and remember the tough farm girl she once was. She could get through this maze of death. It was only meat, after all, and as a girl she had been very aware of where all of their food came from.
Years of eating in restaurants and shopping in grocery stores for neatly packaged dinners had made her forget the reality of what she was eating. When she ate meat, an animal had to die. It is just the way of things. This is all just food. She tried to look at the hanging hulks with more detachment, watching them sway slightly as she passed by them. There was a light at the far end of the long room. It was the kind with a light bulb that was further encased in a hard glass shield, making it more difficult to break. Other than that, the room was dark.
Even so, her eyes adjusted enough to pick out the grisly details around her. She was nearly through the room when she stumbled over her own feet and went off course, crashing into a cold slab of meat. She put her arms out and used the nearly frozen meat to pull herself back to her feet. Delia was shaken, but recovered quickly, until she realized the large mass of cold flesh she was leaning against was wearing clothing.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, backing away quickly, until she bumped into another mass behind her.
She stood stock-still, waiting as her startled eyes adjusted and a face emerged from the blackness. It was whitish-blue from the cold, and the skin was beginning to sag on the bones. Even in these dark conditions, Delia recognized the face of Larry, Francis’s malicious brother. Her hand flew up to her mouth and a muffled scream escaped her.
Larry was hung on a great steel hook in the ceiling, just like the other animals. Delia hesitantly walked back up to Larry’s dead body. He was wearing a white cotton shirt, just like he always had when he was alive. His pants were missing though, and Delia saw that there was a deep red opening on the underside of his belly. She lifted his shirt a little, and then started to retch. His belly, which was large in life, was wrinkled and deflated. The large wound to his lower abdomen told the story. Francis had opened his belly and let his entrails fall out. He had been gutted like an animal.
Delia felt tears prickle at the corner of her eyes. She didn’t cry for Larry. He was evil, a man who reveled in the torture of his younger brother, a true bastard. She cried for Francis, and she cried for Alice. Delia felt like she was the one who had created this monster. She felt like she had made Francis the way he was. She knew he was dangerously obsessed with her as a young man, and she should have known he would go crazy when she left him. It had been all too easy to ignore the possible consequences while she was in the arms of her new lover.
Now it was too late. Francis had turned into a murderer, and now he had Alice. I have to save her. But how? Francis was strong, and this was his battlefield. Delia felt like her resolve was beginning to crack. Seeing this dead body had tipped her over the edge of an invisible precipice and she was dangling only by threads of sanity now. Delia closed her eyes and forced several deep breaths into her lungs. When she opened them again, she was not alone.
The shadowy figures that ran with her in the woods, the ones she had somehow manifested, were here with her now. Amongst the slabs of hanging beef, the translucent specters stood with her in the cold. They were waiting for her to do something.
“What are you?” she called out quietly in the cold. Some of the shapes shifted a little, but offered no answer.
I have completely lost my mind. Delia had hoped that the strange shadows she saw in the woods were simply a figment of her over-stressed imagination, but now it appeared that the situation was growing even more complicated.
“Are you the voices I hear? What do you want? What should I do?”
The shadow being closest to her stretched out a flat gray appendage. While it had no defining features, the gesture looked like it was holding out its hand to her. Surprising herself, Delia reached out toward it. Instead of letting her touch it, the figure moved away. Then with its silken appendage, the creature beckoned for her to follow. As her feet began to move, so did the rest of the apparitions, following behind and around her as she traversed the rest of the macabre room.
They were guiding her, and though she didn’t understand, she felt comforted by their presence here. It was a terrifying place to be alone. When she reached the end of the meat locker and cracked the door open, the sunlight that streamed in was blinding. Delia put a hand up over her eyes, but inched out the rest of the way. Before closing the door behind her, she ventured a last look inside.
There was a table set close to the door, with a variety of tools set across it. Along with the tools was a long, metal-handled filet knife. Delia reached over and plucked the knife from the table, gripping it tightly in her fist. With her strong fingers curled firmly around it the metal warmed quickly in her hand. She felt
like she was ready now.
She stepped out from under the overhang of the barn, and through the opened overhead door. From this vantage point she could see most of the yard and the house was directly in front of her. Neither Francis nor Alice were visible, however. They either had to be inside or behind the house, near the trail that led to the small fishing pond where Francis had taken her as a child. She remembered that day very clearly, though it took her a moment to figure out why.
“That was the day Buster was killed,” she remembered now. That was the day Larry had killed Francis’s dog.
No sooner had the recollection of Buster’s death emerged in her mind than she heard the sound of the riding lawnmower starting up.
“Oh my God.” Suddenly Delia was sure of what Francis meant to do. Why else would he bring Alice to this place? He had no use for a hostage, Francis only wanted her back. He meant to make a spectacle of it.
He’s going to kill my Ali.
Delia’s feet began to move automatically and she sprinted toward the house, knowing that Francis would be around the back of it.
“Alice!” she screamed as loud as she could. “I’m here Alice!” Her arms pumped hard as she ran, the shining steel of the knife flashing dangerously close to her in the sunlight.
“Hang on baby, hang on, I’m coming!”
Chapter Twenty
Francis’s leg was aching fiercely. His thigh felt swollen, and he had a feeling the skin had been scraped raw from too many hours on the prosthetic. When this day was over, he would have Delia draw him a bath with Epsom salts. They soothed his muscles and kept infection away. He smiled at the thought of Delia working around the house for him.
Francis made his way over to the small outbuilding where he had left the riding mower. The mower was badly rusted, and the metal struts that held the cutting apparatus in place were barely hanging on through the ravages of time. Things just did not last here in Michigan. The winters were brutally cold and the summers humid and scorching. Francis rattled the frame of the machine once; noting that one strut in particular had nearly come free.
“Can’t have any hiccups during the big show,” he said to himself, and set about finding a crescent wrench. He located the one he was looking for, but when he tried to pick it up, the wrench fell right out of his hand.
“What the devil?” he muttered, looking down at his right hand. The hand was severely swollen and it had turned an angry maroon color.
“Shit.” He had been so focused on the task of digging the hole and burying Alice that he had blocked out the increasing pain in his hand. Now as he looked at it, he felt the nerves light up as if on fire, sending their acidy tendrils up through his arm. Goddamn woman broke my hand.
He had known it was broken, of course. The small bones of the hand aren’t made to withstand the impact of crashing into a person’s skull, a bone that is designed to withstand impacts. Using a long-practiced pain managing meditation, Francis willed the gnarled fingers to curl. He nodded as they slowly responded.
“Guess I’m a lefty today.” He scooped up the wrench with the two fingers of his still-functioning hand and went about tightening a bolt on the frame structure of the old rider. This was one of the world’s first riding lawn mower designs, and while it was effective, it was prone to breaking. Satisfied that he had secured the device, Francis flopped down onto the ground and manually turned the blades, running a finger along their surface to ensure the edges were still sharp. They were, and should be, as he had hand-filed the twisting metal blades only a few months ago, a painstaking task that had consumed most of an afternoon.
“This will do the job,” he muttered to himself. “Just need to gas her up.”
The old red gas can stood nearby and he emptied the contents into the beastly machine. Tossing the can aside, Francis climbed atop the mower and started the engine. Like a good omen, the mower started on the first try and the little combustion engine roared loudly to life. The vibration of the engine shivered through the machine and made his bones hum. Francis smiled. Excellent. Delia should be making her way to his house now, he figured, and he would have a surprise for her when she arrived.
“I’m going to set you free, my love. Free to love me the way you should.” Francis put the mower in gear and the many whirring blades began to spin. He was beaming on the inside, and as his feet worked the pedals, he made a beeline for where he had buried Alice behind his house. The time of reckoning had come, and he would be the instrument of justice exacted upon her. The metal beast rumbled beneath him and carried him toward his destination.
*****
Consciousness seemed almost subjective. Alice faded in and out of reality. She had no idea what was real and what was a protective dream-world her mind was using to shield her from what was really happening. She had tried to wriggle her way free of her upright tomb as soon as Francis had begun walking away.
It did not have the effect she expected. The crumbled earth around her settled even further as she struggled, the weight of the slightly damp clay and black earth compacting even more against her. The result was even more pressure against her body. Her legs had lost feeling first, and thank God for that because for a while they were burning, as if they were being stabbed with needles and then having hot water poured onto them, a truly dreadful sensation.
The pressure against her chest was the real problem. Her feeble attempts to escape had left her buried tighter than she had been previously, and her breathing was even more restricted now. Each breath was a shallow and painful pant. It was not enough to keep her mind functioning. That’s why she kept blacking out, the world spinning into a fuzzy gray haze, then disappearing completely.
As she drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes she was on the farm, and sometimes she was back home in Florida. She was lying in bed with Delia as she slept. She would trace her fingers across Delia’s bare skin, watching he tiny hairs along her body rise to meet her touch. Delia would roll over and look at her, her cool blue eyes still full of sleep. They would kiss and Delia’s hands would lovingly caress Alice’s body, which begged for her touch. Delia would tell her; she would tell her how much she loved her.
“I love you too,” Alice whispered. Then she heard Delia scream. It startled Alice and she said, “Dee, I’m right here, why are you yelling?” But Delia kept yelling.
“I’m here Alice!” she screamed.
Alice did not understand. “You are already here, Dee.”
“Hang on baby, hang on, I’m coming!”
Delia kissed her softly on the lips, then she started to disappear. Then the bedroom disappeared, and with it went Florida.
“No, no, come back! I don’t want to be alone.” Her vision kept losing focus then regaining it again. When it came back she could see only grass and dirt in front of her. The smell of earth and the reeking stench of decay filled her nostrils.
In the distance, she thought she could see movement, but her eyes hadn’t focused well enough to pick out what it was. Then a loud grinding roar filled the air and the ground began to hum. This was terribly painful, as it caused the dirt around her chest to compress even further. Too soon her vision cleared and she could see the monstrous riding mower thirty yards in front of her.
Francis was sitting atop the beast, his eyes trained on her. Alice’s eyes were locked onto the spinning contraption of blades headed straight for her. The mower wasn’t moving fast, but the distance was short. She had only thirty seconds or so before he would reach her. Her mind was now acutely aware of her impending doom. Goodbye Dee.
Alice was beyond panic now. It was probably a blessing that she had barely enough air in her lungs to remain conscious. The less conscious she was, the less it would hurt. She hoped. The last of her will and emotions leaked out onto the ground as salty tears. Francis was not far from her now, but then she saw another movement. She blinked several times to clear the tears from her eyes.
At first it had only looked like a shadow moving over the lawn, but now Alice
could see that from the opposite side of the house a figure was streaking through the yard toward her. Oh my God, it’s my Delia! Delia was running faster than humanly possible. It almost looked like her feet were not touching the ground at all.
Even at a distance, Alice could see the fire of determination burning in her eyes. She was gaining ground on Francis who was now a mere ten yards away from Alice. She was going to catch up to him, but what then? Francis could do away with her easily, couldn’t he? Delia will save me.
The last Alice saw before the mower consumed her vision was Delia flying through the air toward the growling mechanical beast.
*****
Delia felt like she was flying. Her feet skimmed over the top of the mangy grass so quickly that it almost seemed as if she were racing through the air itself. It did not take her long to reach the house, and then she was sprinting around the side of it. The shadowy creatures were keeping pace beside her. As she watched, they seemed to congeal into one large, gray mass that then enveloped her as she ran. This just keeps getting stranger.
Delia felt as though she was beginning to move even faster, and in only moments she was nearing the edge of house. Her heart beat furiously. I hope I’m not too late. She didn’t know exactly what she would find behind the house, though she had a good idea what Francis must be planning, especially now that she could hear the old mower making its way across the lawn.
Then the house was gone, and she was dancing over the ground behind the butcher’s battered old home. She saw the mower about ten yards in front of her and to the right. He must have come from around the other side of the house. Her frantic eyes found Alice a moment later. Jesus!
Her lover, her life, was buried up to her neck in the yard. She was twenty-five yards away and Delia feared she would not be able to reach Alice before the mower did. But I don’t have to reach her, she thought, her grip retightening on the knife she held. She now sprinted directly for Francis and the mower.
Delia Page 18