Forsaken - A Novel of Art, Evil, and Insanity

by Andrew van Wey

  The girl drew closer. Her eyes were empty but somehow she saw, and Karina felt that sick child's glance moving up her legs, up her body, up her head, and then beyond.

  “Can I keep it?” the doll faced girl asked with a drawl, and added: “Please?” but it came out at as: “Puh-weeeese.”

  Karina gasped out a single sound, no more than an airy cough, and she realized the girl wasn’t asking her, but something behind her.

  A shadow fell over her, and from the floor she looked up to see a boy looming over her with cold, pinhole eyes. He sneered with contempt like a prison guard or a child finding an insect and raising a foot. Then he sunk his hand into her hair. Cold fingers wrapped around the roots of her scalp. His grip was fast and tight, tighter than she’d ever felt, fingers like hooks that dug into her skin. Then, he pulled her with such force that she slid three feet in less than a second. The friction on the hardwood floor burned the skin from her heels as she was dragged away from the door.

  She grabbed the boys hands, or at least where she thought his hands should have been. Her fingers sunk into the skin like warm butter, and she saw a brown paint coating her fingers as she withdrew them.

  Another lurch, another tug, and the floor tore skin from her calves as she slid further away from the door. Her fingers flailed at the floor, clawing, searching for something, anything, but found nothing. Then she found the strength to do one final thing.

  She screamed.

  And screamed and screamed and screamed.

  And as she screamed the doll faced girl skipped and clapped her hands and that broken dog with its missing jaw turned in excited little circles as if chasing its tail.

  Karina felt two things, and then she felt no more. A final violent yank across the floor, away from the door, toward the edge of the room and where that painting sat. And something wet and old swallowing her, body and soul.

  Then all become darkness and anger, utter and complete and devouring, and she knew no more.

  Aftermath

  HIS DAUGHTER LAY asleep in his arms, just as she had for most of the trip home. Linda had insisted on driving, allowing Tommy to sit up front. Now Dan carried Jessica across the lawn to the front door as Linda locked the car and followed behind.

  “Maybe Ginger came home,” Tommy said a little too loud, and Dan raised a finger to his lips as Jessica mumbled and shifted.

  “Maybe,” Dan whispered, reached for the keys in his pocket, and unlocked the front door. It had been years since they had all left the house together, so long that he had forgotten which key opened the door. Two wrong keys and then the tumblers clicked into place and he pressed the handle down.

  The first thing he noticed was the smell. A terrible reek of electrical fire and food overwhelmed him. An orange flicker to his right caught his eye. The fireplace was on, small flames licking the bottom of the decorative logs. A thin layer of smoke hung under the ceiling. A faint popping and the sound of a smoke alarm chirping came from the kitchen.

  “Why is the fireplace on?” he asked as he turned the entry light on. Linda screamed at what she saw.

  The entry light didn’t carry all the way into the living room, but the damage was still visible. The couches had been torn to pieces, the television smashed. Glass and papers lay scattered on the rug in a semicircle.

  Dan passed Jessica to his wife, and Jessica awoke, mumbling, but his voice cut in over her protests. “Honey, stay with the kids outside.”

  “What’s happening?” asked Jessica.

  “Go! Over to the sidewalk, now,” Dan shouted. Tommy just stood there, frozen. “Now! All of you!”

  Linda pulled them down the walkway as he turned to the house. He saw the smoke coming from the kitchen. Had it been thicker he would’ve stayed outside, but it came in a small wisps and he felt he had to try and stop it. He had fire insurance, sure, but it never covered the things that mattered. Houses could be rebuilt, but photographs could never be recaptured.

  “Be careful,” Linda called as he hurried inside.

  Dan coughed, pulling his shirt over his mouth. He hurried through the dining room and into the kitchen, the source of the smoke. His fingers pounded 9-1-1 on his cell phone as the lights flickered on and off. The cell phone rang twice before the operator answered.

  “Nine one one emergency,” said the voice.

  “I’m calling to report a fire and a break in, my address is 3350 Greer Park Lane. I need police and fire personal immediately.”

  “Right away sir, please stay on the line.”

  “Okay,” he said, pushing the kitchen door open.

  “Are you at the residence?”

  “I’m in the residence.”

  “Sir, are you certain you’re alone?”

  “No, my wife and kids--”

  “The intruders, sir. Are they still on the premise?”

  Dan felt his blood chill as he surveyed the kitchen. Paintings were askew, the refrigerator was open, and a picture Jessica had drawn in preschool had been impaled by a knife and hung in tatters.

  “Karina?” he said under his breath as his eyes scanned the room for her shape among the chaos. He found nothing, only destruction.

  Then a low electric hum filled the room as the lights grew brighter. The microwave rumbled and exploded in a violent flash behind him and darkness consumed the house.

  “Sir, are you there?” asked the voice on the phone. “Sir?”

  The police arrived five minutes later.

  A patrol car was first on the scene but the police officer waited until backup arrived before entering. Three of them disappeared into the house, guns and flashlights held high. From the sidewalk Dan and Linda watched the beams of light as they lit up the rooms from the inside. It was like something out of a movie, and Tommy even pumped his fist in the air as another police car screeched to the curb.

  “Think they’ll get the bad guys?” Tommy asked, but no one answered.

  The fire truck arrived soon after and it took them a half hour to clear the house and declare it safe. By then most of the neighbors stood on the sidewalk, watching the spectacle. Dan felt embarrassment and anger, knowing that Marty was there among the group, probably smiling, as if karma had caught up with Dan for their earlier altercation.

  With the power working and the lights back on, the true extent of the damage became visible. The house hadn’t just been vandalized, it’d been desecrated. Ransacked and violated.

  “We’ve checked every room, every closet, basement and attic,” said the detective. “Whoever did this, they’re gone. Probably have been for a while.”

  “What about finger prints?” Linda asked. “Did you get any?”

  “A few, some from the photographs in the living room. They’ll need to be entered as evidence if that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” Dan answered.

  The detective noted this in book, then turned to the wreckage of the living room and nodded. “Most of the damage looks malicious in nature, perhaps some kids having a good time. And you’re pretty sure your valuables are accounted for? Jewelry and such?”

  “So far,” Linda answered.

  “Then I have to ask: have either of you made enemies with anyone lately? Anyone with a reason to do this?”

  Linda turned to Dan and he felt his hand vibrate as the glass wiggled and burned. Tell them, it said.

  “No sir, none that I’m aware of.”

  “Why do you ask?” Linda inquired and Dan wished that she’d let him do the talking.

  “Damage of this nature, cut up photos and such, sometimes it’s someone you know. Crime of enmity, we call it. Like the perp wants to prove a point.”

  “Well they proved their point,” Dan said. “They scared the hell out of my family.”

  “Like I said, could be some kids. Wouldn’t surprise me. We’ll know for sure in a few days when we get the prints. In the mean time, we’ll keep a car in the neighborhood so you folks can sleep easy.”

  “Thank you,” said Linda.


  The detective nodded, tore off a copy of the report and handed it to Dan, adding: “For your insurance.”

  “Good night sir,” said Jessica and the detective gave her a tip of the hat before closing the door.

  He tied off the second garbage bag, opened a third, and dumped a tupperware full of meat loaf into it. Linda had insisted the fridge be cleared out, food and all, in case any of it had been ‘tampered with.’ It was a notion he first thought absurd, but now, after an hour alone with his thoughts while cleaning the kitchen, it was a notion he couldn’t ignore.

  He knew who had done this, without a doubt.

  The cut photos, the knife that had, until the police took it as evidence, been embedded in the wall through a drawing of his family, even the destroyed wedding photo; they were all things that bore the emotional signature of one woman. Enmity indeed. Hell had no fury like a woman scorned and his house was evidence to that.

  And now, that fury was what he was trying to hide. If she cleaned up and saw what he did, a seed of doubt would start to grow and next would come the questions. He had insisted she put the kids to sleep and leave the cleaning to him. “They need their mother,” he had said, but he also needed privacy. While she waited as they fell asleep he scoured the house for anything: a note, a picture, a confession, any information that would connect Karina to the vandalism and, ultimately, to him and the affair.

  But there was nothing to be found, no incriminating trace of her in any of the rooms. If she had been here, she had left no trace. And for the moment, the great mistake, the lie, would continue to stay hidden. He could control it, he thought. If nothing else, he was a good liar. He could control it, and in time he could be a good husband again.

  His eyes fell on that hole in the wall where the knife had been embedded inches deep until the police removed it. The cracked plaster stuck out like a wound. A pale chunk the size of a golfball hung by a few loose threads of insulation. Inside the gash was something else, something that glistened and shimmered. A hum, faint and flat, came from inside.

  He pushed his index finger into the wall and grimaced as it slid into warmth. The hum faded like a passing train. It was sticky, a honey-like substance, and he wondered if bees or wasps had been nesting inside the walls. He withdrew his finger and recoiled in disgust. It reeked of rot, an acrid stench that made his eyes water. He ran soap and water over it, scrubbing it several times until the stench was gone. Then he made a mental note to have their house examined by pest control on Monday.

  “Kids are asleep, finally,” Linda said, emerging from the dining room and leaning against the door frame.

  She looked tired, drained; as if she’d aged five years since the day began. Her hair hung down to her shoulders on one side, leaving the other side bare. Dan eyed the curve of her neck and how it met her chin. It was a part of her body he’d always found a curious beauty in. He remembered that same mysterious curve rising from the spaghetti straps of her black cocktail dress as she held a champagne flute and smiled at him years ago.

  “Hon?” she asked again, perhaps for the third time. “Are you okay?”

  I did this, he thought. I brought this into the house. The lie, and now the destruction. It’s my fault. I’m sorry for so many things, he wanted to say.

  Instead, all he said was: “You look beautiful.”

  They made love for the first time in months that night. Downstairs, he kissed her on her neck, on that spot that turned her breath to short gasp. She clutched the door frame as his lips moved down her body and he hiked up her dress. He was clumsy at first, but as he remembered his way between her she came alive, grasping his hair and moaning. They had both felt the charge after the adrenaline had subsided. A distinct arousal, a surge of life and lust and hormones after the evening’s fright.

  They tiptoed upstairs, past the children’s bedroom. As she took his hand and led him to the bed he felt young again, nervous even. He thought of all the nights he’d snuck out of and back into his dormitory, years ago.

  By the time he entered her she was no longer dry, and she found herself, despite the pain, climaxing easily and often. When he could no longer hold back she whispered his name and pulled him deep inside her and held him there, kissing his neck and smiling in the shadows.

  Afterwards, she lay her head on his chest, a faint smile on her lips as she traced her finger in small circles from his stomach to his neck. “You’re a good man Dan, I hope you know that,” she said in the drowsy quiet that followed.

  “Thanks honey,” he said, but she heard the doubt in his voice. She looked over at him and tapped on his heart.

  “I mean that. The kids are lucky to have you. I am too.”

  A good man, murmured the glass. Or a good salesman?

  He gave her a kiss on her forehead and smiled.

  “Love you,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  After the Storm

  HE COULDN’T REMEMBER a single dream he had that night. The house was quiet. The occasional rattle and hum of pipes and settling wood echoed out, like whispers in the night, no different than usual.

  There was barking, a faint breeze that passed through the kids room, and shortly before dawn Tommy awoke, certain that Ginger was pawing at the bedroom door. When he opened it nothing was there and he returned to bed and forgot all about it.

  The next morning Dan and Linda finished the last of the cleaning. By the afternoon she turned her attention to the rose garden outside, and he watched her pulling handfuls of weeds from the ground in wet clumps as he itemized the insurance claim. He called the humane society twice, but they still had no sign of Ginger, and he found himself thankful the kid’s minds were elsewhere.

  That Saturday Tommy had friends over for the afternoon and they sat around the kitchen playing their Nintendos. It amused Dan to see three silent kids, mere feet away from each other yet all in their own hand-held worlds.

  Jessica kept to her room, and he could hear her talking to her dolls in a raised voice, occasionally shouting. When he opened the door and stuck his head in to check on her she simply raised a finger to her lips, as if quieting an invisible class of students. She spoke of Ginger only once that weekend, at lunch, and when she did it was in the past tense.

  They spent the afternoon at the Junior Museum where Tommy played with pneumatic tubes and water pressure mazes in the science section. Jessica wandered about the small zoo, laughing at geese and raccoons, wrinkling her nose at the bats, and staring at a pair of sleeping bobcats. When he tried to take a picture of his daughter near the cats they awoke with a start and hissed at him before scurrying off.

  Tommy’s soccer team lost their game on Sunday by two points, one of which Tommy gave the other team by hand-balling a shot on his side’s box. Some parents shouted and jeered, even a few on Tommy’s own team. Dan just gave his son a shrug and a grin that made Tommy smile as the players took their places for another kickoff. With eight minutes left in the game a bearded collie broke free from its leash and bounded onto the field where, to the amusement of some and the annoyance of others, it herded the soccer ball around and brought the game to a standstill. Eventually its owner coaxed it away with some apple slices. Tommy laughed, loudest of all, and Dan joined in.

  There by that soccer field, he thought that for all the years he had been only acting, only pretending to be interested, only pretending to be a good parent and a good husband. But even if he was pretending, even if it was a mask he wore and a role he acted, he thought it felt warm and wonderful, and if he kept wearing it long enough, if he kept pretending to be something he wasn’t, could he forget what he really was?

  Yes, he thought. Yes he could.

  He would smile and laugh and wear that mask until he forgot it was there. He would be all those things: a father, a friend, a teacher and a husband. And as he thought about that future he would make he felt, for a moment, truly happy.

  It would be the last time he would ever feel that way.

  PART TWO

  Ghost in t
he Machine

  “HOW LONG WILL this take?” he asked Sajid, who sat before the computer and tapped the mouse. It was a Monday afternoon, and Dan had just finished his graduate class, where Karina had again failed to show up. Much like the way Jessica spoke of Ginger in the past tense, he hoped he could soon do the same with her. The idea had grown on him. Now he sat with Sajid in the back of the digital lab, pouring over a second set of photos of that painting.

  “How long? Well, that depends on the weather,” Sajid answered.

  “The weather?”

  “Whether the database has any other works like it,” he answered with a smug smile. “Whether... weather... never mind.”

  “Cute, but what does that mean?”

  “Well the software’s still in beta but it works. Most of the time. If there’s a Van Gogh, it recognizes the swirls inherent to the style. A Lichtenstein, maybe it’s the lips and tears. More common works, it could take as little as a few minutes. But this, who knows?” He tapped the screen showing a well lit master shot of the painting beneath a superimposed grid as the hard drive clicked and chattered and the progress bar read: 0%. “Maybe a few hours, maybe a few days, maybe never.”

  “Maybe never?”

  “It all depends on the whether,” Sajid said again with a grin.

  “Really?” Dan sighed.

  “Sorry, couldn’t help it. You know, if you could get a sample to the lab, they could date it. That’d give us a range which would narrow the search.”

  Dan had considered that very course of action last week but then decided against it. Dean Robert was a stickler for expensive lab tests and Dan didn’t want to further strain the pittance his department had for discretionary research. However, the project had been the Dean’s idea, and seeing the unmoving progress bar at the bottom of the computer screen made Dan decide to roll the dice on this one.