A Melancholic Black Series (Book 1): The Red Door

by Scriber, R. J.

  As Nell cleans the gore off of Amberly’s face, she notices something remarkable: she’s rejuvenating itself. The life force of another is, not necessarily healing her, but giving her strength and her beauty is returning. She is dead, though she looks more alive now than ever.

  “See?” Nell asks, finishing wiping off the blood. “Such a beautiful young lady!”

  The good times are over rather quickly, as Nell grunts with frustration and disgust as she drags Sion’s mangled cadaver down the hall. Tears of heartbreak and terror stream down her face. There is nothing left, save for roughly, 10 pounds of chestnut-colored skin; a pound of brain matter; 2 pounds of intestine (1.5 large and .5 small). Very thorough for a small girl. If there is any solace to find in Sion’s death, it is: he was delicious from head to toes.

  Literally.

  Amberly follows closely behind. Looking at Nell, then to Sion. Like a hungry, insatiable dog watching its owner pour Kibble in to his bowl. She doesn’t care so much that Nell is touching her food, more curious as to where she’s taking it.

  “Best to keep this out of sight, sweetie,” Nell reaches the basement and opens the door, yanking in the corpse. It thuds as it tumbles down the stairs, smacking on the cold concrete floor below. Nell tiresomely descends down the stairs to retrieve the dead postman.

  She drags him to his new spot in the corner, right next to the water drain. Better to have the blood filter away through the pipes than to dam the entire first floor.

  Nell dumps the body as Amberly runs to it; amazingly still eating. She’s still hungry. On top of that, she gets to dine in the dark, with minimal to no disturbances, and for Nell, out of sight equals out of mind.

  “You haven’t had enough?” Nell asks even though she could correctly guess the answer. Amberly is constantly hungry. To imagine the energy it takes to fuel the recently resurrected. Instant digestion in a body that is now built for doing nothing but killing and eating. She’s unearthly fast and inexplicably quiet. Even a normal child running around all day tends to eat a big meal.

  Sion wasn’t a big man, but he was a grown adult. Even he cannot fill Amberly’s hunger for more than thirty minutes. What Amberly needs is a bigger food supply.

  For Nell, an epiphany: taller… meatier men.

  VIII

  Later that day…

  “Heaven help us,” begs a shocked Rodney as he stares at the blood covering his living room floor. He knows there is something wrong. He’s no idea who is at fault, but unlike Nell with her head in the clouds, his head is firmly still planted on his shoulders. Still based in reality and aware that there are going to be very serious consequences for whatever has happened.

  Amberly came back to them and brought along a new ravenous appetite. There’s so much blood covering the home. The question: from what? Or whom? It isn’t from raw meat, hat much he does know. What has Nell done? He asks himself, unable to answer it. Unable to answer any of the dozen questions running through his head.

  The only logical—though insane—thing to do is to follow the blood trail to its inevitable conclusion. It has to be a body. Just has to be. He just doesn’t know who. Olave isn’t a small place, but there’s only a dozen people that would ever bother coming to their home. That’s what makes it that much harder: what if it is someone Rodney knows? Someone he likes.

  Shaking from fright; his nerves wracked, he follows the dried blood to the basement door. He opens it and sees nothing but darkness. “Nell, honey? Amberly? I’m coming down…” he makes his descent as the smell of iron and the buzzing of flies get stronger and louder.

  He reaches the bottom step, his heart-rate racing. The blood rushing through his ears is all he can hear. Every other sound is diluted; mumbled. Amberly or Nell could be behind him, screaming his name, and he would never take heed.

  “Please, someone answer me. What’s happened?” he asks again, praying that he’s wrong about a dead body. Common sense tells him otherwise.

  The sunlight sprays through a small window on the basement wall and it shines on a hunched over Amberly. “Sweetie?” he calls out, still frightened over his own daughter from the earlier interaction. He whispers, “…shit” as he walks closer. He’s not unafraid, but at least he can see her.

  If she were to turn and take charge, he likes to think that he’d have enough time to react and run away to safety. Though, he could be wrong.

  He walks even closer to see her eating… something. The sounds of her lips smacking together and the grinding and crunching between her teeth. That’s when he realizes that she is finishing up the leftover corpse of Sion.

  His head spins as he gasps in horror, which finally gets Amberly’s attention. He cannot possibly process what he’s seeing, just that every ounce of his being is telling him to run. Run like hell.

  Amberly roars in anger as she charges him. He goes to back but he isn’t anywhere near fast enough and he’s nowhere near safety. Amberly has him by the humerus. Digging her nails in deep. The pure shock has Rodney’s frozen in place. He wants to scream, but right now he can’t. She turns him around gets right directly in his face. She’s so much stronger than him. He can’t breathe, and it doesn’t seem that she cares at all. His strength and resolve are dwindling down to nothing. “Please, stop! Oh G-God!…Stop!” he finally begs, as the stench of Sion pours off of her breath.

  “Stop!” Nell’s voice screams out, as she runs down the basement stairs. “Drop him, now,” she orders as Amberly reluctantly lets go of Rodney. “Bad girl, that’s your father. No. No!” But to Amberly, he’s just a freed meal.

  And he knows it, as he kicks and screams his way to the steps. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Nell?!” He hollers, holding his shoulder. The words barely coming out. He fights through the pain, “Whose body is that?! Oh, God! Is that Sion?!” Rodney can’t keep his head together. He’s losing it. Badly.

  “Oh, calm down, Rodney,” Nell keeping her eerie composure as if none of this is that big of a deal.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down! I fucking warned you! She… killed a person, Nell?”

  “It’s not her fault. She never asked for this. But… just look at her. See how beautiful she looks now? It’s what has to be done to keep her healthy. You have to deal with that,” Nell responds.

  It really doesn’t matter how bad it gets, she’s never going to open her eyes and see Amberly for the monster that she has become. She’d past the point of rational thoughts before she even dragged Sion’s body to the basement.

  “How did you become so dumb? So fucking naive?”

  “You know how, Rodney. You know.”

  That day.

  The day Nell and Rodney were told that their daughter was dead. That’s how she became so “dumb.” So “naive.” She was forced to turn a blind eye to natural and supernatural. Forced to ignore the real world and its problems. Amberly’s back and that’s that. No more reason, no more thinking. Realism is mysticism and vice versa.

  “This ends,” Rodney threatens.

  “No. No it doesn’t. You can’t.”

  “Watch me, Nell. You need help and that… thing over there? That is not Amberly, dammit!”

  “Rodney, just… can’t we talk about this a little?”

  “No, we can not,” Rodney shouts before turning to walk away.

  Nell, panicking, looks all around for a way to stop Rodney. She’s not strong enough to subdue him and Amberly would just tear him limb from limb. She wants to stop him, but doesn’t want him dead.

  A garden spade on the ground.

  Before Rodney can climb even three steps, Nell grabs the spade and hits him over the head as hard as she can. Blood trickles down his brow as he grimaces in pain, before falling down the steps to the ground below.

  IX

  November 12th.

  5:00AM.

  The pain… my head.

  The first two thoughts that crosses Rodney’s mind as he wakes up with his right hand cuffed to a chain wrapped around a beam in the basement.
He’s hurt and disoriented. Chained up like a dog by his own wife: the “love of his life.”

  “Wake up,” a voice coos from the dark. A light turns on. Nell stands in front of Rodney with a plate of salad. “You’ll have to eat green. We don’t have any meat left.”

  “Because of that little monster.”

  “That ‘monster’ is your daughter.”

  “My daughter is dead. Like this fucking marriage.”

  Nell sucks her teeth. “I forgot how cute you got when you were angry.” She’s teasing him, but she is incredibly frustrated that Rodney cannot see things now the way that she does. So traumatized by the events surrounding her child’s death, she keeps turning the other way. She loves Rodney, otherwise he’s sure he’d be just like Sion: slowly digesting. “Your daughter is alive and healthier than before. She needs her father more than I need my husband,” Nell says placing the salad at Rodney’s feet.

  Rodney bleakly states, “She’s not going to stop, Nell. You have to know this. No matter how far down you lock up that feeling.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve looked in her eyes. I can’t stop looking at her beautiful face. I don’t see a monster looking back, I see Amberly.”

  “Amberly would never hurt a fly, let alone kill our fucking mailman! For God’s sake, Nell. Sion has a family. He has kids. He is our friend. Now he’s dead.”

  “I can control her.”

  “How? Please. I’d love to hear.”

  Nell smiles. “She’s watching cartoons right now. All I had to do was give her lunch and ask nicely.”

  Rodney shakes his head in disgust. “You are fucking sick. Who did you feed to her this time?”

  “Don’t be rude, Rodney,” Nell says. “It was Janine’s dog, Prince.”

  “Our neighbor’s dog? HA! That’s fucking rich, Nell. Just keep murdering everything and everyone.”

  “You hated that dog!” she shouts and she isn’t wrong. If Rodney wasn’t trying to make a point, he’d admit it. “I know what I will do for my daughter, do you?”

  “I’m not moving to first in line for lethal injection.”

  “That’s unfair, Rodney.”

  Rodney tilts his head in disbelief. “You have to be shitting me, baby. I see that I can’t convince you, but, it’s wrong. For Christ’s sake, just look at what you are doing! I’m your husband and you have me chained like an animal. In our home. You’re willing to end this? Everything we’ve built, over a delusion?”

  “Once upon a time this was a delusion. I’m protecting our child,” Nell insists. “It’s all out of love.”

  “How far are you gonna go?”

  “As far as it takes. There’s nothing I won’t do,” she says looking deeply into Rodney’s eyes. He knows she’s dead serious. “No-thing.”

  Rodney smiles, not through humor, but by how bat-shit crazy Nell sounds. “That’s good, Nell… really. But she will kill you. Both of us.”

  Nell smiles back which angers Rodney. “Amberly would never hurt me. I’m her mother. You’ll see that she’s the same little girl that we raised together. Just, stop seeing what you want to see and actually look. Watch.” Nell leans in and kisses Rodney on the cheek. “I promise, Amberly is back.” She leaves.

  Rodney screams, “Nell! Don’t… help me! Please! Don’t fucking leave me! Don’t leave me down here… Nell!” but she doesn’t listen as she slams the basement door, leaving Rodney, once again, all alone in the dark basement, with nothing but the pile of mulch formerly known as Sion.

  Left to deal with the stench of defeat and a dreaded sense of his own mortality. Time to ponder what he has done and said about his own child.

  Bad boy.

  Noon…

  Hot steam from the shower covers the bathroom mirror before a hand wipes it clean. Staring at herself is a naked Nell. Her body: a stacked paragon even after having a child. She was never one for being lazy. “Fit! Fit! Fit!” That’s her motto. She has the curves; hips, breasts, and legs that go for miles.

  It’s always been an advantage for women: their curves. Their soft skin, sweet voices, and gentle touch. A mother’s touch. Kryptonite to men.

  She’s gorgeous. Beautiful and humble, it’s what makes her irresistible. Rodney must be out of his damn mind. Nell sure is. Maybe it’s a sexually-contracted result of their lovemaking.

  Amberly needs to eat. Nell knows this. To control her hunger and aggression as well as to keep her looking young, healthy, and normal. As normal as it can ever be, at least. As much as the thought of murder doesn’t exactly turn Nell on, she needs to help her daughter at any cost and pay the consequences later. Time to use her looks to get what she wants. Something that might be hard for her since she’s never done it before in her life.

  It’d be fair to say that most men who see a woman like Nell would most likely assume she’s done it hundreds of times. Truth is, she always hated the attention that her beauty brought her.

  Hard to tell what she might have today if she let her looks do the talking and not her mouth. Chances are she’d have someone more loyal than Rodney. Then again, maybe some one worse. She’s just not selfish or conceited. Though if her looks could help anyone who was in need, then she would make use of it. No better person to help than her own daughter.

  Men won’t stand a chance.

  Downtown Olave.

  The Soup Kitchen. A place that Nell and Rodney visit every Thanksgiving and Christmas to donate turkeys and hams to the homeless. Always willing to be helpful. Anything to ease the burdens on the souls who always seem to be less fortunate and severely hard-pressed. More-so Nell’s idea than Rodney’s. He’d rather keep what he’s earned than to give it to the needy.

  He’s not rapacious when it comes to money. It’s just harder for him to give away the things he worked hard for, for free.

  Nell has always had a better understanding that some people are born with everything, while most are born with nothing. There is no in-between. A difference as large as night and day with no shades of grey.

  She enters the building. It’s just a large cafeteria in the old elementary school. Town saw no need on knocking it down, so it became a home to the homeless. A hobo haven which has been getting larger through the years with no identifiable reasoning. Most likely the shrinking economy.

  “Nell!” an older, taller homeless man calls out.

  Nell smiles. “Sean, how are you?” she asks the familiar friend.

  Sean walks over, his long beard covering his neck. He smiles, his missing teeth make him adorable; at the very least to Nell. “I’ve been better. Say, are you here to donate some of those delicious turkeys?”

  “No, unfortunately, not this year. I was laid off of work back in April, I’m afraid.”

  “Aww, shit. I’m sorry, beautiful.”

  Nell smiles quaintly. “It happens.”

  “Where’s, uh, Mr. Gray? Rodney?”

  “Home. That’s actually why I’m here,” she giggles. “We’re moving out and we need a hand.”

  “I can help!”

  “Can you?”

  Sean smiles. He’s been through a lot in his life, but he’s just happy to be alive. When you go through the worst life can offer, you really learn to love the little things. More importantly, the calm times. Something Nell should have learned by now.

  “Oh, sure. I’m not as strong as I used to be, but I can lend a hand. Shit, before I was homeless I used to work for a living. Construction.”

  “Well I’m going to pay you,” Nell offers.

  “Nah. No need. Your family has done a lot for this place and I’ve heard you’ve been through your own troubles. I’m happy to help free of charge.”

  “I have to pay you somehow…” she offers again, just trying to make it easier on her own soul for what she has planned.

  “Well… lunch. Maybe a sandwich or something. Nothing too serious,” the humble Sean recommends. “Will work for food.”

  “Deal!” Nell says excitedly. Ironically enough, that’s exactly wha
t she’s working for.

  To think that she figured it would be harder to get someone to come with her, and she completed her goal by just walking in the front door. It’s amazing what being nice to people can wield you. Friends. Relationships. Dinner for the dybbuk living in your basement.

  The decayed flesh on Sion’s corpse cracks as Amberly’s rotted teeth rips through it. She chews nice and slow to savor the flavor of his Mediterranean skin. Like bubblegum or some kind of skin-jerky, it’s surprisingly chewy.

  She swallows as she rips off another piece. This time with some meat covered in maggots. It bothers her none. It’s like an ice cream covered in sprinkles. Chewing on Sion’s femur, it’s all that’s left of him. Grown adult male consumed in 24-hours.

  Rodney sits, still imprisoned in his own home, watching in horror. More so disgust. Scared shit-less like a whimpering mutt. To see the little girl he raised devolve into this creature.

  “How did this happen?” he asks her. But she does nothing but finish her dining. “I’m talking to you!” Still, nothing.

  He snickers in amusement. She won’t even pay him mind. Perhaps if she wasn’t eating. Though she’s just about done.

  “Hey! Look at me!” he hollers kicking his feet. Still, she doesn’t. He knows what she wants. For the time being he amuses her, “Amberly,” her calls out.

  The little girl stops eating just long enough for Rodney to understand that she likes to hear her name. Whether Amberly is in there still or there’s something that rolls off the syllables that this tiny creature likes, Rodney may be wrong about his daughter being dead.

  Somehow, this upsets him even more. There’s no mistake he loved his little girl, but this thing is a mockery of everything he remembers about her.

  “You’re not my daughter. You know that right? You’ll never be Amberly. Amberly is dead. Dead!” This time the little girl looks up and shakes her head. “Oh… finally you notice that I’m here,” Rodney sardonically says. “You really think that you’re Amberly?”