Expiration Date

by Duane Swierczynski

  Coming from 2-C.

  Then there was a sickening thud as something hit the wall right next to the door, so hard I felt the entire hall shake around me. There was another cry followed by something sharp—a slap. Another thud against the wall, then a please please please Mom no.

  Goddammit I told you to be a quiet!

  This was none of my business. I knew that. What happened behind closed doors should stay behind—

  Oh screw that.

  I raced to the door and tried the handle. Locked. I guess if you’re going to beat your son you’re going to want to bolt your front door for privacy.

  So I made a fist and pounded it into the door five times quickly, hard as I could. The crying choked off into a startled gasp. I heard a shhhhh. Footsteps approached the door. There was a hushed Shut up! Now! I mean it! Then a snuffle and a cough. The lock tumbled, the door creaked open. Erna, the woman from DeMeo’s office upstairs, peered out into the hallway. Mascara was running down the sides of her cheeks. Her skin was flush, hair askew. She couldn’t see me of course.

  “Is someone there?”

  “Yeah, Erna. It’s me. How about you stop smacking your kid.”

  “Hello?”

  I doubt if I would have been so bold in real life. But here, my other self was invisible. Nobody could hear my words—except maybe the kid. And that’s what I was counting on. To make sure he knew someone was listening. That his abuse was not going unnoticed.

  Erna looked around the hallway again, then took a step back and started to close the door. But before it shut completely, she looked directly into my eyes. It wasn’t a momentary gaze—our eyes meeting by accident. I swear, for a second there, she saw me.

  Then she slammed the door shut.

  I stayed outside the door for a while, listening for the slaps or the crying to resume. If it did, I would pound on the door again. I could do this all night, or until the pills ran out, whichever came first. But 2-C remained silent. Soon I felt awkward, standing in a dark hallway in 1972. So I put my ear to the door one last time, heard nothing but silence, and continued down the stairs to Frankford Avenue.

  It was bitter cold outside. Traffic crawled down the avenue. The El rumbled overhead, bringing home workers from downtown. The frigid air felt good in my other lungs.

  I wasn’t quite ready to go to Darrah Street yet, so I wandered across the street to the newsstand. A headline on the cover of the Evening Bulletin caught my eye:

  4 Y.O. GIRL MISSING

  Standing belly-to-counter at the newsstand—hoping nobody would bump into me and/or through me—I skimmed the story. The words were tough to read in the near-dark, and there were just a few inches of copy before the jump, but it was enough to get the idea. A four-year-old girl named Patty Glenhart had gone missing from Kresge’s, just a few blocks from where I stood.

  At first I was filled with that sick feeling you get when you read about something tragic like this. You wish this didn’t have to happen. Then my self-defense system kicked in. Push it away, because there was nothing I could do about it except send thoughts and prayers to the little girl’s fam—

  And then I remember where I was, when I was.

  I could do something.

  VII

  The Pit

  I needed a copy of the paper. I needed details. Names, addresses. Reporter stuff. Another fumbling routine later—this one lasting a full half-minute—I had a copy of the Evening Bulletin tucked under my arm.

  Back upstairs in the office I opened the paper and memorized as much as I could. The Glenhart family lived on Allengrove Street in Northwood, about six blocks away. Patty had two older brothers, both in school. The girl, even though she was barely out of toddlerhood, was incredibly precocious. According to her mother, she had the habit of marching up to the Kresge’s luncheonette counter and ordering something to eat before her mother could say otherwise. The waitress and cook thought it was cute, and usually gave her a free snack.

  But the same waitress and cook were quoted as noticing some “creepy” guy with long sideburns and a yellow jacket lurking near the lunch counter around the same time the mother started screaming for help, where’s my baby, oh God, where’s my baby. Police are seeking all leads, please call MU6-8989…

  I read as much I could, committing as many details as possible to memory, then laid down on the floor and waited until I felt the familiar dizzy feeling again. I had taken four pills. I thought I would need the time, stalking my own father. I hadn’t counted on this.

  After a while I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I was back in the apartment.

  After pulling myself up off the floor I checked the time on my laptop—3:17 a.m. Only a few hours until sunrise. Not much time at all left.

  I hit Google and typed in “Glenhart” and “Allengrove” and “missing” and I got a hit immediately.

  Like every old city, Philadelphia has a long history of atrocities. Some made national headlines, like Gary Heidnick and his infamous West Philly basement of sex slaves. Or the shooting of a police officer by a radio journalist who would later receive the death penalty and become a cause célèbre. Or the 1985 bombing of an entire city block to combat a bunch of radicals who called themselves Move. Only, that last one was the fault of the mayor.

  But even here in Northeast Philadelphia—for which Frankford served as an unofficial border between it and the rest of the city—there were plenty of atrocities, too.

  Take the “Boy in the Box”—the name given to a kid, no more than six years old, who was found beaten to death and dumped in an old J.C. Penney bassinet box along the side of a quiet street back in 1957. Despite intense publicity, and a photo of the boy included in every city gas bill, his identity remains unknown to this day.

  Closer still was the Frankford Slasher, a serial killer who preyed on prostitutes in Frankford during the late 1980s. I hadn’t been kidding with Meghan about that; the Slasher was real. Police apprehended a man who was later convicted of one of the murders, but the real Slasher is believed to be dead or still at large.

  This wasn’t the case with “The Girl in the Pit,” another Frankford atrocity. I was surprised that I’d never heard of it. I made it a point to seek out any crime stories that took place where I grew up.

  But one amateur true-crime website had posted a quick case summary. The story was real. Patty Glenhart had gone missing, and stayed missing. They found her body years later.

  I didn’t linger over gruesome details. I only cared about two things: the name of the bastard who had taken her.

  And his address.

  The house was a single on Harrison Street, just four blocks away from where I grew up. It dwarfed much of the other homes in the area, and had a wide skirting of lawn on both sides. A deep porch. Three floors, including an attic.

  The top floors didn’t interest me—it was the pit. It was little more than a crawl space under the laundry room just behind the kitchen. But according to the website, the pit was where the remains of Patty Glenhart were discovered by a new owner doing renovations. There was a full, unfinished basement in this house, but the pit was something extra, hand-dug by the previous owner. The killer of Patty Glenhart.

  His name was Dennis Michael Vincent. After his arrest in October 1983, Vincent admitted to police that he intended it as a bomb shelter in case the Russians had any H-bombs pointed at Frankford. He’d grabbed four-year-old Patty because he thought an attack was coming in March 1972 and he wanted to save her because she was so blond and young and beautiful and would be useful when it came time to repopulate the country. Forensic investigators would find twenty-seven of her bones broken, and her head fractured in six places.

  Later, Vincent claimed he’d been mistaken. She wasn’t beautiful. She was evil. She was the daughter of the devil.

  So now I stood in front of Vincent’s house, wondering how to break in. The front door was locked. So were the windows. I moved along the side of the house and climbed onto the wooden porch
. There was still a summer weather screen on the back door. Vincent hadn’t bothered to change it out, even though it was February. I pressed the fingers of my right hand into the mesh screen and clawed down as hard as I could. The material slipped beneath my fingers. I clawed harder, hanging as much weight as I could on it.

  The screen ripped a little. I put three fingers into the hole and tore it away from the frame.

  There was an eye latch and hook. I worked it free, then tried the handle of the storm door.

  It was locked.

  But the door was wooden, with a single pane of built-in glass. I stepped back down to the yard, found a rock, then tapped it against the glass. It held. I couldn’t risk smashing it too hard—I had to be quiet here. Stealthy. I tapped the rock again. The glass splintered a little. A few taps later it finally broke, the shards clinking on the linoleum floor on the other side.

  I waited.

  No sound, no nothing. It was close to four in the morning.

  I pushed away the rest of the glass then reached my arm in to flip the latch. This took me a long time, especially since I couldn’t see what the hell I was doing. Ghosts in movies have it easy. They can walk through walls, float up through a ceiling, sink down into the floor, whatever. Here I was, having trouble with the most rudimentary door lock ever created.

  Finally the lock opened, but there was another one. A deadbolt. Hadn’t counted on that. I reached my arm in farther and wrapped my fingers around the nub and pulled hard. It moved a fraction of an inch. I pulled again. It opened with a loud clack.

  I was in.

  Now I needed to find that laundry room and the pit beneath. I prayed I wasn’t too late. Prayed that Vincent the monster hadn’t taken her and killed her in the same day.

  The time was 11:00 p.m. according to a cuckoo clock in Vincent’s kitchen. The whole place was full of dusty antique furniture, which made me think Vincent’s parents had been well-to-do but died young, and left him a ton of things he didn’t know what to do with. Including adulthood.

  Did he sleep upstairs? Or did he keep vigil by the trapdoor he’d jerry-rigged on the wooden floor of the laundry room?

  I kept moving.

  The laundry room wasn’t hard to find. It was right behind the kitchen, and I could see the hand-sawed square in the floor, with the rusty hinges on one side and a deadbolt handle on the other. Yes, more locks. It took me a full minute to work it free and jump down into the dark pit.

  My mouth instantly tasted like dirt. I pressed my hands against the floor and pushed up, spitting and snuffing. It was freezing down here. There was about four feet of space below the boards, with a wildly uneven muddy brown floor carved out. The dirt was cold and clammy under my palms, and felt like greasy modeling clay.

  There was almost no light down here, but I could make out a few things the more my eyes adjusted. On one side was a small kid-sized mattress. No bed frame, just a single sheet that half-covered a cheap mattress that looked shiny. In a cardboard box next to the mattress were a couple of toys—a worn fabric doll, a wooden duck with red wheels and a string attached to its beak. The kind of toys you expect to find in an orphanage. A badly run, broke-ass orphanage.

  And curled up in a corner was Patty Glenhart.

  She was sleeping on the dirt next to an exposed pipe. Condensation dripped from the rusted metal. She must have chosen that spot because it was slightly warm. I moved closer then whispered to her, not wanting to frighten her more than she already was.

  “Patty.”

  She groaned. Curled up tighter into herself.

  “I’m going to get you out of here, Patty, I promise. You’ll be back with your mommy and daddy soon.”

  From behind a small forearm covered with light, downy hair, a tiny eye forced itself open. A beautiful green eye.

  And then she screamed.

  I tried shushing her, reassuring her, but it was too late. Her piercing cry traveled up the pipes, through the floorboards, through everything, and convinced Dennis Michael Vincent—who was probably already awake, sitting in his parents’ old king-sized bed on the second floor—that something was wrong. I heard his heavy footsteps clomping down a wooden staircase. He was coming down to check on his captive.

  “Patty! Listen to me! You need to be quiet!”

  Then he was right above us, almost tripping over the open trapdoor.

  “The hell!?”

  Years from now, the neighbors would come forward with all kinds of details. Like how they remembered Vincent putting out ten paper bags of dirt for each weekly garbage collection. Didn’t even dump the dirt in the backyard; he put it out for the trash guys to pick up. Neighbors would also remember hearing sawing and hammering—and, once in a while, screaming. But they just thought it was a cowboy or science fiction show on TV. Maybe a war picture. Nothing to worry about.

  Couldn’t they hear Patty’s screams now? Why didn’t they pick up the telephone and call the police—if nothing else but to put their minds at ease?

  There was a harsh, bright light from above as Vincent turned on a light in the laundry room. Instantly I felt like I was going to throw up. The light again. Light did not like me. I inched backwards, trying to tuck myself back into the shadows. Of all of the Achilles’ heels in the world to have, why did mine have to be the thing the planet is bathed in half the time? And could be summoned with the flick of a switch?

  Two brown work boots landed on the dirt, along with two legs clad in muddy denim. Then his whole form crouched down. Dennis Michael Vincent was a tall man. Ruddy-cheeked, big-boned with sideburns gone wild. His eyes were too close together, like he’d grown up while the upper half of his face stayed frozen.

  “Shhhh now little girl,” he said. “We talked about this now. You don’t want to get the belt again do you? You want me to bring the belt into the pit?”

  I lunged at him.

  It hurt like hell—my other bones colliding with his real ones. But I think it hurt Vincent, too. And confused him. He grunted and spun around, squinting into the near darkness. I hissed at him, trying to sound as monstrous as possible.

  “Get out of here now.”

  Let him worry. Let him freak. Let him run screaming from his own house. Maybe then the neighbors would do something.

  “Who is that? What the—”

  I didn’t know if he could hear me. I didn’t care. It made me feel good.

  “I’m the Devil. I’m here for my daughter.”

  I charged him again.

  This time, though, Vincent managed to grab me for a few seconds—how, I have no idea. But the light from above burned my back. I felt like I was going to throw up and fry to death at the same time. I twisted and rolled across the dirt, hearing Patty’s screams and Vincent’s fevered grunts as he searched for whatever was attacking him.

  The opposite corner of the pit was pitch dark. I crouched there for a moment, trying to catch my breath and fight the dizziness I was feeling. Not yet. I couldn’t wake up just yet. Just a little while longer. Just until she’s free.

  “You’re doing that, aren’t you? You’re doing that, aren’t you, you little whore?”

  Patty screamed, but the cry was broken in half, like she’d been throttled halfway through.

  “You’re doing that because you’re the daughter of the Devil! You stop it! You stop it or I’ll use the belt on you until your bottom bleeds!”

  There was a slap. I charged him again. I didn’t care if I burned alive down there. I needed this man to stop hurting this child.

  Vincent’s head struck pipe. There was a dull bonging sound and a second later he cried out in agony. Then he went scrambling up out of the pit. I grabbed a sheet from the kiddie mattress, draped it over my head and then climbed up into the laundry room, not stopping until I was safe in the darkness of the living room. He was in there, too. I could make out his dim form among the shadows, mouth agape, eyes bulging, trying to figure out what the hell was chasing him.

  “I’m still here.”

&n
bsp; I snarled, then smacked a lamp off a table.

  Vincent screamed, stepped backwards.

  I moved in closer, looking at his body, wondering where I could strike that would do the most damage.

  “Go outside. Call to your neighbors for help. Tell them to send the police. Tell them the Devil has come for you.”

  Vincent stumbled backwards until he bumped into his living room wall. He was panting. Shaking his head.

  And then he reached over and flicked on the living room lights.

  I threw my right arm up in the air. For a moment I must have looked like one of the scenes from 1950s movies about people caught in the flash of an H-bomb explosion. As if a forearm and bicep can hold back sheer atomic hell? I didn’t black out, but I think I stopped recording conscious memories, because the next thing I knew I was huddled beneath a coffee table. Vincent was taunting me:

  “Devil don’t like the light, does he?”

  My right arm was paralyzed by agony. Physical pain is one thing. As bad as it gets—like, say, torture room bad—you can always go into shock and retreat inside yourself. For whatever reason, this felt like soul pain…pain you couldn’t hide from, ever. So long as your soul exists.

  I couldn’t take it anymore so I darted for the only available darkness—the kitchen. Then under the table. Sliding across the linoleum. Shaking badly. Ready to throw up and pass out.

  “I’ll give you light, Devil!”

  Another click. More light, all around me. Where the hell was I? Right. Kitchen. There was cool linoleum beneath my fingers—the remaining fingers of my left hand, that is. I didn’t know where my right hand was.

  Two brown work boots appeared in front of me. The table above me began sliding to the left. Then two table legs lifted up from the floor. The shadow line raced toward me. And with it, a wave of murderous light. It was endgame time.