Charnel House

by Anderson, Fred

  Garraty set his jaw in defiance. Who was this little fuckball to question him, anyway? Sure, the story might not be the exact truth, but it was close enough. There was something crazy going on here, something supernatural, and he didn’t have time to sit around jawing with this teenager to keep himself out of the nuthouse. What he needed to be doing was getting the fuck out of here. Back to the trailer to pack his shit and blow town faster than a ten-dollar whore. North, maybe. The Chevy plant up in Tennessee might hire him. Surely all the years he put in with GE would be worth something to them. He might have to live in another trailer for a while, but with a little time he could save up a down payment for a house, even if alimony and child support payments slowed him down. Who knew? Tina might even want to get back together eventually, to start a new life in a new place where Garraty didn’t drink too much and there wasn’t a dead kid trying to gut him. Distance would fix things. It had to.

  “I realize your story might seem real to you, Mr. Garraty, but you yourself admitted that you’d been drinking. It was more than a little, wasn’t it?” The look on the doctor’s face belied his easy tone. “I think maybe it was a lot.”

  “Son, I don’t give a good goddamn what you think,” Garraty said. He felt the anger rising in him. This smug little prick didn’t know shit from shinola, and while Garraty may not have known much more, the one thing he did know was that he hadn’t done all this damage to himself. No matter how much beer he’d had.

  “There’s no need to use—”

  “You get these fucking things off of me now,” Garraty roared, his eyes flashing. He jerked on the restraints that tethered him to the bed. “Then you go call the police to come take my statement, and I’ll consider not suing your sorry ass for malpractice!”

  Dr. Redman recoiled as if he’d been slapped. His butt bumped against the overbed table and sent it rolling across the floor. It banged into the wall and the can of Coke toppled over, glugging its contents out over the veneered pressboard surface. The two men stared at one another, each waiting for the other to back down. A thin caramel stream of cola ran over the edge of the table and spattered on the tiles below.

  Finally, Dr. Redman sighed and said, “I’ll have someone remove the wrist restraints. For now. I’m ordering a psych eval, but if you give me any trouble I’ll have you involuntarily committed. Don’t test me, Mr. Garraty. Sheriff Langston will back any decision I make, of this I am certain. I only want to help you, even if you don’t agree.”

  “Fine. Just get these things off me.”

  Two minutes after Redman left the room, an orderly entered and unbuckled the padded straps encircling Garraty’s wrists, then set about cleaning up the spilled drink. Much better. Garraty raised his arms and stretched as best he could, relishing the feel of freedom the simple act brought. Maybe in a while he would try getting out of bed and going for a walk. But first, he needed to concoct a better story for the cops. They wouldn’t be as forgiving as the good doctor. They were trained in bullshit detection. He thanked the orderly and let himself sink back into the pillows. As he thought, he mindlessly traced the knotty stitch-line that traversed his cheek with one finger. Before long, he drifted away to a place without dreams.

  16

  Some time later, the sound of a throat clearing pulled him back to wakefulness and Garraty opened his eyes. A bored-looking man about his age stood just inside the doorway, watching him through hooded eyes shaded from the overhead lights by the brim of a steel-gray campaign hat. A gold star outlined in black stitches decorated the front of the hat just below the Montana crease, and his tan shirt looked so starched Garraty suspected the man might eschew a hanger and simply stand the thing in the corner at night. The silver tag over his right breast identified him as Mullins. He held a clipboard loosely at his side.

  “Joe Garraty?”

  His voice was deep. Commanding. The voice of a former drill sergeant. Garraty nodded. A couple of beers sure would hit the spot right now.

  “Dr. Redman informed me you’d like to report a crime.”

  “I want to report an assault. Attempted murder.”

  Something flickered in the deputy’s dark eyes. He already thinks I’m lying, the voice in Garraty’s head murmured. That fucking doctor has gotten to him and stacked the deck against me. He wondered if Redman had told the deputy he was crazy.

  The deputy stepped closer to the bed and raised the clipboard so he could write on it. “Attempted murder,” he repeated.

  Garraty heard the doubt in his voice.

  “Goddamn right. My friend can back me.” At least on part of it.

  “Mr. Garraty, I’ve spoken with Mr. Mendoza. He told me his memory of the night in question is tenuous, at best. I understand there was alcohol involved?”

  “Just a little beer.”

  One of the deputy’s eyebrows arched, but he didn’t say anything and instead scribbled something on the clipboard. Over the scratch of pen on paper Garraty heard the soft snick of a latch, and behind Mullins the bathroom door swung slowly open.

  The dead boy stood in the darkened area, peering out at Garraty through his half-lidded eyes. The crusted blood was gone, and his lower lids were as clean as the blade of the paring knife that gleamed in his undamaged hand. His head had begun to reshape itself into something resembling what it must have been like before the accident. Other than that he looked perfectly whole to Garraty except for the missing sneaker, which must still be buried in the corrupted earth under the Barlowe house.

  The dead boy stepped into the light, and Garraty whimpered.

  Mullins paused and looked up, the pen still pressed to the paper on the clipboard. “Pardon?”

  “Oh, Jesus, oh fuck,” Garraty moaned. Some dim part of him was still aware of the deputy, but only barely. His world had shrunk until it was just him and the living corpse... and the knife. He flailed at the flimsy bedclothes, which suddenly seemed to be binding him as securely as the wrist restraints had. “Leave me alone, kid. What’s done is done and can’t be undone.”

  “Calm down, Mr. Garraty.” Mullins cast a wary glance over his shoulder, following Garraty’s gaze. “Who are you talking to?”

  The boy stepped around the uniformed man and reached for the end of the hospital bed with his empty hand. He grabbed a fistful of the sheet and began to clamber onto the end of the mattress. Garraty shrieked and crabbed backward off the head of the bed. He crashed to the floor in a tangle of cords and tubes behind the array of machinery, and in that dim part of his mind that seemed to function autonomously he felt the sting of the IV catheter jerking out of the back of his hand.

  “Wadded!” The boy said, crawling up the narrow pad.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the deputy demanded. He dropped the clipboard on the chair where Luis had been sitting earlier and came around the side of the bed. “Doctor Redman. DOCTOR REDMAN!”

  Garraty paid him no mind and scrabbled across the tile floor on his butt along the wall, oblivious to the chill against his bare skin where the hospital johnny flapped open. “Stay away from me!”

  The boy scurried up the bed smooth as butter. Mullins plunged his arm through a gap between machines and grabbed hold of one of Garraty’s feet.

  “Get him, you fucking inbred hillbilly, not me,” Garraty cried. He slapped the wheel lock on the piece of equipment closest to him and shoved the machine into the crouching deputy. Mullins let go and went over backward onto his ass, his service pistol clattering on the tiles when he fell. The machine tipped over and fell on top of him with a loud crash.

  “Jew due,” the boy said.

  Dr. Redman appeared in the open doorway, took in the scene in an instant, and shouted something down the hall. The only word Garraty recognized through the rush of blood in his ears was haldol. The boy clung to the end of the bed closest to the wall for a moment, hanging over Garraty like one of the floats in the Macy’s parade he used to watch with his daddy at Thanksgiving as a youngster, then he jumped nimbly to the floor in the gap
between the equipment and the wall. Garraty squirted through the opening he’d created when he moved the equipment and scrambled toward the hall door. He saw the doctor’s eyes widen, and the younger man brought his hand up and patted the pocket of his lab coat.

  A small hand seized Garraty’s calf in a steel grip and he yelped, the doctor’s strange behavior already forgotten. With his other foot he kicked backwards, relishing the crack of his bare foot against the dead boy’s forehead. He rolled to his right, away from Mullins, who had chucked away the machine and was reaching for him again. His leg slipped from the grip of the boy and Garraty pistoned his foot a second time, but missed.

  “Drop the knife, Mr. Garraty!” Redman yelled, lunging into the room.

  The boy scurried forward and as he came Garraty saw the paring knife descending in a cruel arc in a kind of liquid slow motion. He tried to move away but it was like he was trapped in a dream world where the air was as thick and viscous as glue. Christ, couldn’t these idiots see that he was about to die? The knife dug a furrow across his forehead and a crimson spray splashed on the tiles. Garraty felt the blade scraping across his skull, and the sensation made his eyeballs tingle. The boy’s lips were peeled back in a feral grin as he brought the knife up for a second go. Mullins leapt onto Garraty, oblivious to the presence of the dead boy, grabbing at his arm. White-hot pain blossomed in Garraty’s side as the knife found its mark. Redman’s arm snaked around his throat, holding his head still, and he felt the sharp sting of a bee in the side of his neck.

  “Jesus, man, stop hurting yourself!” Mullins cinched his arms around Garraty’s torso, trying to pin him down.

  Garraty struggled against his captors, but felt himself growing weaker. Blood streamed down the sides of his face and tickled his ears. He couldn’t turn his head anymore because of the doctor’s arm, but in the periphery of his vision he saw the boy bring the knife down a third time. Agony flared in his thigh as the flesh parted before the blade and Garraty moaned. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Toom. Forever and ever, amen. In that moment of lucidity, he saw his future laid out before him in a series of scenes like a line of dominoes waiting to fall. His tormentor had no plans to kill him. No, he was just going to torture Garraty for the rest of his days, punishing his hidden sin like the God of the Old Testament.

  But maybe there was something he could do about that. Something that might heal his soul and quiet the boy. Might ease his own suffering. Heal his pain along with his soul.

  “Let go of the knife, Joe,” Dr. Redman said in a strained, but calm, voice.

  “Toomey,” the boy said, and somewhere in the depths of Garraty’s mind, in this state of crystal clarity, his words finally gelled and became coherent.

  Wadded. Jew due. Toomey.

  What did you do to me?

  “I killed a little boy and buried him in the crawlspace of the old Barlowe house,” Joe Garraty slurred in a thick voice.

  His words chased him down a black tunnel.

  17

  Garraty woke in stages, one sense at a time. First, he heard the regular soothing beep of the heart monitor, then he became aware of the cool sheet draped over him like a shroud. In his mouth, the greasy taste of artificial lemon. An inhalation carried on it the faint competing scents of alcohol and Lysol, and the cool dry air burned the sandpaper of his throat. He opened his eyes to find a quartet of men standing around his bed, staring down at him.

  “He’s waking up,” the one he didn’t recognize said, which was kind of stupid, Garraty thought, because he was already awake. The man wore a uniform similar to Mullins, who stood next to him at the foot of the bed, only his tag identified him as Chief Investigator Frank. He was a little younger than Garraty, had a buzz-cut and a strong jawline, and his unblinking eyes reminded Garraty of a snake’s. Garraty wondered if he was related to his old friend Tanner Frank. Same county, same name.

  To his left, Dr. Redman looked down at him with a mixture of concern and... something else. Anger, maybe? Scorn? His mind didn’t seem to be firing on all pistons yet, and his thoughts floated in tiny disconnected bubbles in his mind.

  On his right, Sheriff Herbert Langston loomed, ample belly spilling over the black belt holding up his Wranglers. Dark stains radiated from each armpit of his olive shirt, and sweat shone on his florid forehead. The gold star hanging over his sagging breast gleamed in the fluorescent light. The big man himself, ready to lock me up.

  “How do you feel, Mr. Garraty?” Redman asked. His nose wrinkled the tiniest bit as he spoke.

  Disgust, Garraty decided. That’s what it is. “Tired.”

  “You’ve been in a medically induced coma,” Redman said. “That’s to be expected.”

  Coma. The word bounced around in Garraty’s head like a rubber ball. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The hard knots of the stitches were no longer there.

  “Mr. Garraty,” Sheriff Langston began, his booming voice bigger than the hospital room, “do you mind if we ask you a few questions about the Barlowe house?”

  Redman’s gaze shifted sharply to the man across the bed from him. “Sheriff Langston, I don’t think this—”

  “How long was I out?” Garraty croaked. He half-expected a puff of dust to drift from between his lips, his throat was so dry. Raising a hand—not tethered to the bed rails this time, he noticed with more than a little relief—he ran it across the cheek that the boy had parted with the knife. A thin hard line of healing tissue followed the path of the blade, but like his tongue, there were no stitches. Scruffy beard grew up his neck and onto his face, swallowing the damage the way kudzu swallowed entire trees. I must present quite the picture.

  “Two weeks,” Redman told him. “Your injuries were extensive. You needed time to heal.”

  Two weeks. Christ! Garraty wanted to be pissed, wanted to rage at the doctor for stealing two weeks of his life, but he couldn’t muster the energy. At least this blackout didn’t bring a hangover with it like the last one. Why isn’t Tina here for my great awakening? It had to be scheduled; that’s why everyone was waiting. He hoped she was in one of the waiting rooms with the twins. Maybe she could come in for a short visit when this was over.

  “Mr. Garraty, do you remember what you said to my deputy before you passed out?” Sheriff Langston asked. “About the boy?”

  “Yes.” His lisp was better, too. No more Sylvester the Cat.

  “Tell the sheriff what you told Dr. Redman and me,” Mullins said. He seemed agitated, Garraty thought. Jumpy.

  “I really must object to this,” Redman said. “Mr. Garraty just woke up. He needs some time to recover before you start questioning him.”

  “I want to talk to them, doc.” Hearing the words come out of his mouth filled Garraty with relief. The pre-coma confession had been like a hot needle slipping through inflamed skin into the fevered infection of an abscess. Now it was time to squeeze, and get all that pus out so the healing could begin. Funny when you thought about it, because that figurative needle would almost certainly lead to a more literal one down the highway in Atmore. Garraty found he didn’t care so much about that anymore. Dying under the state’s care had to be better than the alternative.

  “You said something about a boy, Mr. Garraty?” The investigator’s voice was soft, his drawl buttery, but his glittery eyes told Garraty he was just waiting to strike.

  Too bad he won’t get the chance. To Sheriff Langston he said, “I told them I killed a boy and buried him in the crawlspace under the Barlowe house.”

  “When did you do that?”

  “On the Thursday before I came to the hospital.”

  The sheriff and deputy exchanged glances.

  “What?” Garraty demanded.

  “Mr. Garraty, we went to the Barlowe place to investigate your statement,” the sheriff said. “We didn’t find any evidence to back up your story.”

  “Hadn’t been anybody under that house in years,” Mullins added. “I’d bet my life on it. Only way in was under the porch,
and it was so damn dusty I needed a mask. No footprints, nothing. Ruined a pair of pants crawling back there to take a look. And the spiderwebs holding the cover in place. Jesus.”

  Garraty remembered the clang of the piece of metal falling over, and the feeling of something racing after him as he crashed through the underbrush to get back to his car. How the hell had it gotten back over the entrance? In his mind’s eye he saw the slumped thing he’d imagined, carefully pulling the piece of roof into position, covering its hidey-hole like a trapdoor spider. Waiting for its next victim, sick desire smoldering deep in the empty hollows of its eyes.

  “Impossible,” Garraty said. “I wiped the damn thing clean because I cut my hand on it and was trying to get rid of the blood.”

  He held up his left hand, palm out, showing the thin line of maroon flesh where the gash had been. The irony of having taken such precautions only to end up confessing his crime was not lost on him, and he stifled a grin. The dead boy had saved the CSI team a lot of work.

  “I know what I saw, Mr. Garraty,” the deputy said.

  “And I know what I did.”

  “Why don’t you tell us what you did, Joe?” Frank said. “And don’t leave any details out.”

  What did you do to me?

  Garraty licked his lips. “Can I get something to drink?”

  Redman produced the tablet computer Garraty had seen him use before and spent a few seconds swiping and pecking at it. After he’d returned it to the pocket in his lab coat he said, “Mr. Garraty, you don’t have to do this right now, no matter what the sheriff says. You’re not well.”

  Garraty wondered if he meant physically or mentally.

  “We won’t let him overdo it,” Sheriff Langston said. There was an edge in his voice.