by Rod Redux
The older boys assigned Little Dan laundry duty. The problem with that was that the washer and dryer were in the basement, and Little Dan was scared to go down in the cellar by himself.
Little Dan begged to do the dishes, which was only slightly less onerous than folding and carrying the laundry up and down the stairs, but being the youngest of the clan, he was doomed to get the short end of the stick, no matter how much he pleaded and complained.
Little Dan hated the cellar. He hated the shadows that lurked beneath the rickety wooden steps. Anything could be down there, he knew, ready to reach between the boards and grab onto an ankle. He hated the cellar’s winding, narrow passages, its dank smell and sticky cobwebs. The cellar was so full of junk there were only a couple pathways twisting between the towering boxes and broken furniture, outgrown toys and discarded hardware. And sometimes you could hear sounds down there, weird noises that might be something creeping up behind you, only you couldn’t see what it was because of all the junk that was stacked up everywhere.
Despite his objections, Little Dan found himself in the basement shortly after his parents left, folding his brothers’ slimy underwear atop the dryer, which was situated in the far back corner of the basement, near the shelves where his Mom stored all her canning supplies.
He was almost finished with his assigned chore—after poking holes in the seats of nearly every pair of his brothers’ underwear with an old dart he’d found on the floor. He was about to pick up the clothes basket and carry it upstairs when he heard laughter from the top of the stairwell, then the WHOOMPH! of the basement door slamming shut.
He threw the basket down and ran for the stairs, knowing exactly what his brothers planned to do.
“No! Please!” he cried.
A moment later, the lights went out, and Little Dan screamed as loud as he could scream.
He had stumbled up the stairs in the dark, falling, banging his chin off one of the risers, certain some scaly green claw was going to grab his leg from between the steps any second. He sobbed as he crawled the last few steps on his hands and knees, then scrabbled blindly for the knob, grabbing it and shaking it, begging his brothers to let him out of the cellar, please, just let him out of the cellar!
His brothers laughed, telling him to say “pretty please”. They asked if he could hear the Devil coming for him yet.
“Pretty please!” he cried. “Now open the door! Hurry!”
And he could! He could hear the Devil coming for him!The clack of its hooves on the bare concrete floor. The clink and tinkle as the monster knocked over some old broken lamp or chipped dish, striding through the winding passages. Yes, he could hear the Devil coming!
Shaking all over, snot bubbling from his nose, he hung from the doorknob, hysterical with fear.
“He’s coming for you, Runt,” his brothers taunted him.
“He’s coming to take you to Hell, Danny!”
“We promised you to him so we could have superpowers!”
“Nooooo!” Little Dan wailed in despair, believing them as all little brothers believe their older siblings, no matter how outrageous the lie.
And then he heard it on the steps, the thump of the Devil’s hooves on the wood planks. He heard its breath whooshing in and out of its goat-like snout, saw the twin hot coal gleam of its eyes. That red light glinted on its curling horns, sparkled on its toothy grin.
Little Dan had screamed until something ruptured in his throat.
When his brothers finally let Little Dan out of the basement, he was practically comatose. Cold and pale, unresponsive. They cleaned the snot and vomit from his face, changed him out of his pissy pants, but he was hardly any better when his mother and father returned from shopping, and when his mother scooped him into her arms and demanded to know what his older brothers had done to him, Little Dan had finally roused from the safe place in his mind into which he’d fled, and crying hysterically, he’d told on all of them.
His mother had cried with him, cradling him to her bosom, horrified by the stupid cruelty of her four older boys. Reverend Stein had flown into a rage.
He beat the boys so badly they wouldn’t have been able to go to school the next day if it hadn’t been summer vacation, and Little Dan’s brothers had stood there and taken it. They didn’t howl and run in four different directions as they normally would have done. They took it because they knew they deserved it. All four of them were shamed by the thoughtless horror they saw shining in their little brother’s eyes.
Little Dan had never ventured into the basement of his childhood home after that. Just the thought of doing it paralyzed him with fear. Even now, more than twenty years later, he suffered from an overwhelming dread of cellars. He could force himself to go into one if he was accompanied by another person, but even then it was a dicey proposition, and he’d been known to turn tail and flee at the least little flicker of the lights.
Dan Stein’s first thought, when he opened his eyes in the basement of the Forester House, after realizing where he was, wasn’t actually a rational thought. It was more of a panic-gestalt, a convulsive outpouring of all his phobic memory associations. In an instant, he regressed to his eight-year-old self, and, heart racing, he tried to lunge to his feet and find his way back out of the dark.
PAIN!
He collapsed, writhing in agony. He couldn’t breathe. His broken limbs flopped uselessly.
He tried to cry for help but could only rasp the words out.
“Help… me…” he gasped, and then he choked on blood and had to turn his head to one side and vomit.
He could hear his brothers at the top of the stairs, laughing, taunting him.
“How do you like the dark, Runt?”
“Are you scared?”
“Oooooooooo!”
“Please,” he groaned, puke trickling from the side of his mouth. “Please… let me out!”
But they only laughed. Why did they have to be so mean?
“Can you hear the Devil coming for you yet?” his oldest brother called down to him.
“He’s coming for you, Danneee!”
Little Dan began to cry. Hot tears dripped down the sides of his face. Yes, he could hear it! He could most definitely hear it! Only it wasn’t clacking toward him, hoofs striking sparks off the floor, it was slithering toward him like the original serpent, making a scabrous scraping sound as it advanced.
“He’s coming for you! He’s coming for you!”
“Please, God,” Little Dan choked. He tried to scoot away with his one unbroken leg, but he didn’t have the strength to move his shattered body. He stared blindly toward the slithering sound, eyes wide but unable to penetrate the dark. He flailed on the slick stone floor. “Please…”
Something plucked at the cuff of his pants leg, and he whimpered.
The slithering sounds were all around him now, closing in on every side.
Icy fingers curled around his arm, his ankle.
Little Dan squeezed his eyes shut and thought about cookies and cake and all the good things he wasn’t supposed to eat. He hoped they had cookies in heaven, and he could eat all he wanted without getting sick. Cookies and pie and bread…
Yeah, that would be nice.
6
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Billy whispered in the dark, and Rob chuckled, pressing up against him.
Billy’s stomach gave a lurch when he realized that Forester was already unclothed. Little bolts of electricity went zinging through him wherever their bare flesh touched. Billy put his palms to the man’s ridged stomach, moving tentatively at first, his heart beating so hard it hurt. He swallowed, trying to moisten his cottony throat, then slid his hands around to Forester’s back before swooping down, finally, to the man’s taut, lightly furred buttocks.
“You’re already hard,” Billy tittered. “I can feel it poking me in the hip.”
Robert didn’t reply.
Billy pulled the man’s pelvis toward him, ground against him groin-to-groin. F
orester put his hands to either side of Billy’s face and inclined his head, smashing his lips to Billy’s. His mouth came open, tongue flicking. Billy met him lick for lick, their teeth scraping together in their passion.
“You’re driving me crazy,” Billy gasped.
Billy groaned as Rob licked and nibbled his way across Billy’s jaw to his neck. He tugged lightly on Billy’s shirt, urging him to remove it, and Billy stepped back and jerked his tee off over his head.
“You can’t tell anyone about this, okay?” he pleaded huskily. “I have to stay on the downlow. You know what I mean? For my career.”
Rob shoved him back against the wall and pressed against him, lips and tongue returning to his neck.
“Oh, yeah,” Billy sighed, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back. “That feels good.”
Forester kissed his shoulder, then nipped a nipple. He worked his way down Billy’s stomach, then yanked his shorts and underwear to his ankles.
“Oh, yeah! That’s the spot!” Billy hissed.
Fingers brushed through his hair, and Billy shivered. He started to nuzzle against the warm body pressing against his back, and then he started, his eyes flying open in the dark. He sucked in a breath to yell out, and the figure behind him clamped a palm over his mouth. The fingers in Billy’s hair tightened, jerking his head back.
Someone else in the room with them…! But who?
Billy thrashed, panicking, and Forester stood to grab his waving wrists.
Who else is in here? Billy thought desperately. What the FUCK is going on?
He felt himself lifted bodily from the floor and was tossed brusquely onto a bed. The bedsprings squawked as he landed on the filthy mattress. He rolled onto his stomach so he could leap back up, but they were on him a second later, both Rob and his unseen accomplice, grabbing his arms and legs, holding him down.
“Rob? Rob, who’s in here with you? Who is this?” he cried, wrestling against their feverish flesh. It was too dark to see anything but vague shapes. He managed to turn partway onto his side. His fingers found a belly, then a nose, and he tried to strike his adversary in the face. “Let me go, damn it!”
A knee came down on his neck, pinning him to the mattress. His wrists were seized, his arms twisted roughly behind his back.
Billy wheezed as the man’s weight came down upon him. His heart hammered. He couldn’t wriggle free, couldn’t catch his breath to yell.
They’re going to rape me! Billy thought with disbelief and horror.
He grit his teeth at the pain, wondering why Rob was doing this, and just who his accomplice could possibly be. He couldn’t believe it was any of his teammates. That was unthinkable!
The man on top of him hit him then, punched him in the middle of the back, and none too gently. Billy yelled out, tears beading his eyelashes.
“Somebody--!” he gurgled, and the man kneeling on his neck pressed down harder, choking off his cry for help.
Red shapes pulsed in the darkness. His eyes swelled. His blood rushed in his ears.
I’m going to pass out! Billy thought.
Another blow landed on his back, then another, but it was all growing distant and dream-like. It almost seemed as if it were happening to someone else, like his mind had disconnected from his body, had floated into the air like a balloon.
Yes, there were two of him now, Billy Below and Balloon Billy, and he was looking down on the tableau from several feet in the air, watching rapists and raped from somewhere in the vicinity of the ceiling.
His fear and pain seemed very far away now. Remote. He had risen above fear and pain, just as he’d risen above his body.
Aloof, their violent behavior only made him feel sad. He pitied the Billy Below. He pitied the animals cavorting atop his former flesh. They were less than animals. Even animals didn’t do things like this.
As if sensing the presence drifting above his head, the man violating Billy’s insensate form twisted his face toward the ceiling, looking around with a snarl, eyes narrowed in hatred.
That’s not Rob, Billy thought, looking down at the leering man-beast.
He could see the room clearly now. It was like he was watching the whole thing through night vision goggles. Tiny squalid room. Ancient soiled mattress. Naked figures writhing on the bed.
The resemblance is uncanny, but that’s not Rob.
They were two of a like, his rapists. Twins. Fair, handsome men like Rob, almost mirror images of the man he’d snuck downstairs to have sex with. Except for their facial hair. They had mustaches, the two of them, not a beard like Rob. They were thinner, too, their muscles stringier, the figures of men who’d known hunger.
That’s when the man kneeling on his neck plunged a knife into Billy Below’s back.
He pulled it out from under the mattress and plunged it into Billy’s body as casually as someone would stick a knife in butter. Billy watched as the man twisted the knife out, the blade’s serrations scraping across ribs, then did it again. Blood coursed rapidly down his flesh, spreading across the dirty mattress.
Oh, crap! Balloon Billy thought. I guess that’s it for me! I’m dead!
Billy thought this with mild surprise and a great deal of regret—and a modicum of embarrassment as well, knowing how this was going to look when his friends finally found his body.
He wondered if he was going to see a long tunnel with a light at the end of it now.
He turned slowly in the air as his body was butchered below, looking for that passage.
There it was! Opening in the far corner of the ceiling!
But there was no heavenly light at the end of that tunnel. There was only darkness, like the throat of a beast, and it devoured him before he even thought to try to fly away.
7
Somehow Francis was choking himself and squealing like a pig at the same time. It didn’t seem possible for a person to do something like that, but that’s what he was doing when Raj and the others rushed into his room.
Raj hurried to the bed after flipping on the lights. Allen and Jane stumbled through the doorway right behind, blinking groggily.
“What’s going on?” Allen said fuzzily.
“Oh my god! What’s wrong with Francis?” Jane cried.
Francis lurched on the mattress, his hands around his throat. His face had purpled. His eyes were bugging out. Yet a high-pitched squealing sound continued to blare from his contorted mouth, a noise that human vocal cords did not seem capable of producing.
From the corridor, Tish’s panicked scream: “Why is he doing that? What’s wrong with him?”
“Francis? Francis, stop it!” Raj yelled, trying to pull the little fellow’s hands from around his own throat.
If Francis heard, he gave no sign of it. His bloodshot eyes had fixed onto a space three or four feet above the bed. Flecks of spittle flew from his lips as he squealed.
“Francis!” Raj yelled, yanking on the medium’s wrists. He heaved back with all his strength, but Francis didn’t raise so much as an inch from the mattress. His body was as rigid as a board. It was almost as if some invisible force was pinning him to the bed.
The others had crowded around the psychic. Raj gave way as Allen and Big Dan joined him. Raj stepped back, hand cupped over his mouth, as the two bigger men tried to pry the medium’s fingers away from his throat.
“Francis, honey, wake up!” Jane cried.
“What the hell--!” Allen exclaimed. He grunted and fell back, losing his grip on the little man’s bird-boned wrists.
Raj moved quickly around the bed. “All together this time! Pull!”
They hauled at his wrists again, all three men at once, the muscles in their arms and necks standing out. Francis rose stiffly from the mattress half an inch, foaming at the mouth, then he slammed back down on the bed hard enough to jerk them off balance.
“Christ!” Big Dan cursed, stumbling into a nightstand.
“Keep trying! He’s going to choke himself to death!” Jane pleaded.
“Reeeeeeeeeeee!” Francis shrilled.
Rob Forester pushed by Tish then. “What’s going on--?” He came up short, his brain unable to process the chaos inside the room—Francis, purpled, squealing, and a trio of sweaty men trying to tear his hands from around his own throat. Only moments ago he’d been dreaming of his childhood in Seattle.
Allen, Raj and Big Dan pulled at Francis’s wrists again, grunting, muscles straining—
--And suddenly Francis was released.
All three men reeled back, and Big Dan fell on his butt. It would have been funny, like something out of The Three Stooges, if the whole situation wasn’t so awful.
Francis’s body arched upwards in the middle, his head twisting back, his arms flopping loosely at his sides. He bent so far it looked like his spine would snap right in the middle, and several of the men and women gathered in the room cried out in horror at the sight, expecting to hear the muffled crunch of breaking bones any moment. Francis’s squealing reached an eardrum-bursting crescendo… and then he collapsed.
He whooped in a lungful of air, and his purple face began to lighten. Jane rushed to tend to him, patting his cheeks and asking him if he could hear her, but he had fallen unconscious, his eyes rolled back in their sockets.
“What the hell was that?” Allen demanded, glaring around at Raj and Big Dan. “Raj, weren’t you keeping an eye on us?”
Raj and Big Dan exchanged a guilty glance.
“I just… stepped out for a moment—“ Raj began to explain, stumbling over the words, but Big Dan jumped in before he could take full responsibility.
“It’s my fault, boss. Raj went outside to get some fresh air. I was supposed to be watching the monitors, but I dozed off. It’s nobody’s fault but mine.” Big Dan had risen, was dusting off his bottom.
“We saw him choking himself on the monitor and ran straight up here,” Raj finished.