The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  Her voice was closer. “I like how you say my name.”

  Footsteps sounded behind them. Joe half-turned and saw Mitch Martin regarding them from across the room. If he was perturbed at discovering his wife breathing down Joe’s neck, he gave no sign.

  “How’s it going?” Mitch asked.

  Joe sidestepped Bridget, shoved his trembling hands in his jeans pockets. “Still ahead of schedule. I think we’ll have a good bit of it done by the end of June.”

  Mitch nodded at the ceiling. “Did Bridget tell you about her contraption?”

  “She told me about a contraption,” Joe said. “Did you have a timeframe in mind for it?”

  “No sense in waiting. It’ll arrive here tomorrow.”

  Joe did his best to keep it professional, to talk about the kinky object the way he’d discuss a screen door or a showerhead. “Whenever you’d like us to install it is fine by me.”

  Bridget chewed a nail girlishly. “Are you sure you’ll be able to manage it?”

  “I’ll have Shaun put it together tomorrow afternoon.”

  Bridget looked aggrieved. “Joe, this is a specialty item. It was very expensive, and I’d rather you be the one to handle it. It’s not your normal swing. It’s very large, with several vital modifications.”

  Joe made to protest, but Mitch cut in. “You can be here to help him, can’t you, honey?”

  Bridget beamed. “That’s right. I can show you how it fits together.”

  Jesus. “I’m sure I can figure it out.”

  She held his gaze a beat too long.

  “Then it’s settled,” Mitch said, clapping his hands. “I’ve got to get back to work. Bridget, you’ll help Joe with the swing?”

  “My pleasure.”

  Mitch was about to go, but stopped halfway to the door and stared at Joe. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

  Where do I start? Joe thought. Your wife wants to jump my bones, and you’re either on board with it or too dumb to see it. Either way, I wish both of you would get the hell off my job site so I can turn my back without fear of being groped.

  “Everything’s great, Mitch. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

  Apparently satisfied, Mitch went out.

  Leaving him with Bridget.

  “If I don’t answer the doorbell, you can come in,” she said. “Tomorrow afternoon, I mean.”

  “Why wouldn’t you answer your door?”

  She shrugged. “I might be in the shower.”

  “That reminds me.”

  Her smile was eager. “Yes?”

  “I need to see my wife.”

  And he left her standing in the living room.

  But Michelle was gone, and of course Lily was too. Afraid Bridget would follow him over, he left his house and started up the Tundra, hoping by the time he got back Bridget would have left the work site. Or taken a cold shower.

  He thought about seeing Little Stevie, but he’d been to the Morrison’s twice already that week. He hadn’t told Michelle about it, feeling strangely as though he were having an affair behind her back. There were still no leads for permanent foster parents, though Copeland said Sharon Waltz was as intent as ever on gaining custody of the boy. Joe hadn’t broached the topic of adoption again with Michelle because he knew how gung ho she’d be. It’d cease to be a discussion about if and would become a matter of how and when. And though Joe’s emotional attachment to the child was growing, he knew how complicated the situation would be, how problematic his own history with Angie and Sharon would become. Yes, Judge, he imagined himself saying, I get kids kicked out of their parents’ homes so I can raise them myself. It’s actually very logical if you turn your head sideways and squint a little.

  Joe rolled down his window, felt the warm kiss of the summer air on his forearm.

  Joe passed through the business district and motored past the police station, outside of which Copeland’s cruiser was parked. He didn’t really feel like seeing Copeland at the moment, he realized. For that matter, he didn’t feel like seeing anybody.

  Yet ten minutes later he found himself rolling down the Hawkinses’ winding gravel lane. Part of it, no doubt, was the growing affection he felt for the old couple. It also probably had to do with the fact that he was naturally drawn to the country. This place, particularly, appealed to him. The way the trees seemed to lean over the road, the lane itself infrequently dappled with sunlight. The aroma of green leaves and tough bark.

  The house came into view.

  Joe let his foot off the gas, the hackles of his neck unaccountably rising. He reached up to turn off the stereo with nerveless fingers, but he regretted it instantly. The silence was so profound and palpable that it was almost like driving into a different dimension, one where the air hung gravid as a threat and sound was totally nonexistent. Joe had no idea exactly why the sight of the two-story farmhouse was so foreboding to him, nor were there any physical details heralding trouble. The garage doors were closed; the yard was as meticulously kept as ever. The front door was closed too, the interior wooden one as well as the glass storm door, and he realized as he brought his pickup to a halt that this was precisely why he was so uneasy. The interior door could be closed for many reasons, and the fact that he’d never known the door to be closed when the Hawkinses were home should have simply indicated the obvious—they’d gone to town for something.

  Yet Joe sensed there was life within the house right now, and further, he sensed that whoever was here was not Harold or Sadie Hawkins.

  Wishing he’d brought his gun, Joe cut the engine and climbed out of the pickup. But rather than shutting the door, he reached under the backseat and groped for the crowbar. Finding it, he grasped its cool black surface and slid it out. To give himself courage, he tapped its slender neck on an open palm, ran his finger pads over the curved tip and the dual vanes of sharp steel at the end.

  Feeling like a man in a dream Joe drifted up the front walk.

  It’s nothing, he told himself. Quit being such an alarmist.

  Joe looked around, wondered, Where are the bugs, the birds?

  It’s a quiet day, the voice reassured. It’s not like there’s been some sort of mass extermination out here.

  Joe shivered. He didn’t like that word. Not a bit.

  He mounted the front porch. Depressed the doorbell with a sweaty fingertip.

  It’s fine, he thought. Sadie will answer and have you drinking iced tea within five minutes. Maybe you can listen to some of the ballgame with Harold.

  It’s not fine, he thought, the sweat now trickling down his temples. It’s not fine at all. And Harold’s not listening to the ballgame. You’d hear it by now.

  Check the garage windows! the voice challenged. One of the cars will be gone, I guarantee it. Then you’ll know everything is normal and you can get your butt back to work.

  Joe reached out, grasped the handle of the glass door, and drew it open. As he did he fancied he caught a whiff of something unpleasant.

  But it could be anything, he reasoned. A dead mouse left rotting in a trap. A flyblown raccoon carcass, its belly wriggling with maggots somewhere in the woods nearby.

  Or your paranoid, hyperactive imagination?

  Joe grasped the inner knob and pushed open the door.

  The smell was like a hammer blow to the face. Not only because it was so putrid, but because it was so damned hot in the entryway. Someone had cranked up the heat to eighty at least, so that whatever fetid stench had mushroomed in here had pretty much had its run of the place. My God, Joe thought, grinding his shirtsleeve into his nostrils, the odor had bored its way into his bones.

  Joe told himself to take it easy, to breathe. But that was a tall order when he was sucking in short sips of oxygen through a sweaty denim filter. His whole body was slicked with perspiration now, and Joe decided that turning down the
heat was the first job that needed tending. He’d be able to think better without that stuffy air blowing on him from every vent in the house. Joe went over to the thermostat—the HVAC subcontractor had installed a new one with a digital readout—and Joe was shocked to see the display claiming it was functioning properly. According to the readout, it was a comfortable seventy degrees in here. And what was more, the heat wasn’t even running. Supposedly, the system had been turned off.

  The sweat pouring off him, his shirt turning dark and clammy on his skin, Joe strode over to the floor vent and let his hand hover over the grate.

  Nothing.

  Nothing was blowing from the vent, but the air in here was definitely stirring. No, more than stirring. It was roiling, churning, swirling through the entryway like a low pressure storm system, the kind that spawned tornados and a urine-colored haze. Joe glanced left and right and noted the windows were shut, and furthermore, the door leading to the living room in front of him was closed as well.

  Which was troubling. He’d never seen that door closed, never known the Hawkinses to keep their house shuttered up this way.

  Get out of the house, the voice in his head urged.

  Ridiculous, he thought.

  “Sadie?” he called, and winced at the eruption of his own voice in the eerily silent house. “Harold?” he said in a voice slightly less resonant.

  No answer.

  Of course there’s no answer! he thought. Harold and Sadie took a little trip, and they somehow screwed up the settings on the heat pump. Or the pump itself is malfunctioning. It could be the way they installed it. More likely it’s the unit itself.

  And what about the smell? he wondered as he started tiptoeing toward the living room door.

  That’s easy, he thought. The Hawkinses are old, especially Harold, who’s over eighty. They left some food out—maybe an open gallon of milk—and now it’s spoiled. Or they left the fridge open. Hell, you’ve nearly done that yourself.

  Joe allowed himself a sniff. His eyes began to water.

  That isn’t spoiled milk.

  Then what is it? he wondered.

  It doesn’t matter, the voice in his head answered. You’re about to find out.

  And that was true enough. Joe’s fingers closed on the knob, twisted, and pushed.

  The stench in here was worse.

  His forearm to his face, Joe moved through the living room, into the four-seasons room, and spied no sign of Harold. The television and radio were both silent, the rooms themselves glum and musty with disuse.

  Can’t be, he thought. I was here last week.

  A lot can happen in a week.

  Right, he thought as he moved into the kitchen. A guy can lose his mind and start jumping at shadows.

  “Sadie?” he asked. “You in here?”

  Empty too. What was more, there were no packages or milk containers on the table or the counters. The place was as neat and tidy as always. Sadie kept a clean house, and despite his age, Harold was faithful with the vacuuming and dusting.

  So where were they?

  Would you check the damned garage? the voice within him shouted.

  Moving swiftly, he passed through the dining room, into the mudroom, and opened the door to the garage.

  Which contained both cars.

  “Crap,” he muttered.

  A shaky, sullen voice within him spoke up. Doesn’t mean anything. They could’ve been picked up by friends. Hell, they could be upstairs.

  Sure, he thought. Upstairs and dead.

  Joe passed a hand over his forehead and was amazed at the amount of sweat he’d generated. If he didn’t get out of the house soon, he’d combust.

  He returned to the living room, grasped the banister, and started up the stairs. He called their names a couple times, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d begun to hate the sound of his own voice, and not only because he sounded like a terrified grade schooler. Mainly, he hated the idea of making his presence known in the house. Known to what wasn’t a matter he was in the mood to speculate about.

  Joe gained the second floor and turned left, not because he wanted to, but because he knew it was chickenshit to turn right. The only rooms in that direction were the bedrooms the Hawkins children had used many years ago. The only things he’d find down there were old toys and artwork Sadie couldn’t bear to throw away. At least if Sadie was anything like Joe’s own mother. And she was, he realized now. Which might’ve explained why he’d taken such a shine to her, and she to him. Which might’ve also explained why he felt so goddamned scared right now as he neared the bedroom. He’d definitely located the source of the odor. The bedroom doorway was ajar, and it smelled like a landfill at this end of the hallway. Only worse. And he knew, with a sense much deeper than smell, that it wasn’t garbage he was scenting. It was…it was…

  Joe shoved the door open.

  And gagged. The room was dark, but not dark enough to conceal what was on the bed, what was bloated and buzzing with flies.

  Harold’s corpse lay like some ancient grizzly bear decaying in a secret forest glade. The stench was withering, a sickening goulash of rancid pig blood and spoiled vegetables. Joe felt his gorge elevator into his throat, a sizzle of bile as hot as a cutting torch on the soft flesh of his palate. He knew he should go away now, call Copeland. Hell, he wanted to go away, wanted it more than he wanted anything. Yet there was something about the bloated corpse that drew him onward, that called to him in spite of the odor, in spite of the furtive sounds he heard coming from the bed.

  Joe nearer closer, breathing through his mouth even though it was a futile measure. The stench still insinuated itself into his being, still clung to his nostrils like a pestilence. Five feet from the bed Joe saw the bizarre shapes wending their way down Harold’s bare arms, shapes that rose from the skin like childish decorations yet were clearly part of Harold’s body.

  Joe’s eyes had adjusted pretty well to the dimness of the bedroom, and though he knew it was only a matter of flipping a switch or releasing the roller blinds with a simple tug, he couldn’t bring himself to wash the room in daylight. Not yet. Something about the idea seemed blasphemous to him, as if he’d be committing a further degradation on Harold’s rotting corpse.

  Joe took another step, leaned down, and screwed up his eyes. Harold’s arms were threaded with what looked like branches from some sort of evergreen tree. The thin strands of wood pierced Harold’s flesh beneath the sleeves of his white T-shirt and serpentined their way down to his knuckles as though someone had decided to use his arms as a cross stitch pattern. Joe reached out, let his fingertips whisper over the needles of the evergreen branches and realized they were from a yew tree, likely one on the Hawkinses’ property. The effect was hideous.

  But not as hideous as the sight of Harold’s face.

  Whoever had worked on the old man had been at it for a good while. His mouth had been stuffed with more yew branches—in fact, there were so many that Joe could see sharp tips poking out of the cheeks and tenting the already distended flesh of his throat. Tiny black ants crawled lazily over the branches and along the purpled skin of Harold’s puffy neck.

  A filament of burnished afternoon light spanned the right side of Harold’s face from ear to bald crown, and though the eye was a half-inch beyond the daylight’s reach, the glow was strong enough to reveal another horror.

  Sable feathers protruded from the empty sockets, whoever had committed this atrocity having taken Harold’s eyeballs with them. Joe was no ornithologist, but he suspected the feathers had belonged to a raven. In addition to the bluebottle flies buzzing drowsily over the corpse, there were ants teeming in and out of the gory eye sockets, the blood having long since congealed.

  Something else drew Joe’s gaze. He didn’t want to venture any nearer—the smell was already making him lightheaded—but he did anyway. He got as close as he dared t
o and peered through the murk at Harold’s face.

  Someone had tattooed the old man from mouth to forehead. The design was crudely done, but Joe could make it out well enough. The upper lip was festooned with navy blue roots and what was supposed to represent the wide base of a large tree. The trunk encompassed Harold’s nose, the flesh between his eyes, and then spread into a vast network of branches on his forehead and bald pate. It looked like a crudely scrawled oak tree, whoever having done it either in a hurry or not particularly skilled with a tattoo needle. Yet Joe could discern the shape well enough. In the tree there appeared to be faces, or perhaps they were skulls. Too curious to just let it go, Joe moved over and tugged one of the roller blinds. The room flooded with light. Joe turned away, blinking like a mole, and regarded Harold.

  And bellowed in terror at what lay beyond the man’s corpse.

  Sadie Hawkins lay huddled in the corner, clearly dead, and clearly having suffered some unspeakable shock. Her mouth was hinged wide in a permanent shriek, her eyes staring moons that had filmed over from having baked in this suffocating heat for God knew how long. But it was her hands that stunned Joe the most, the arms somehow having frozen in a warding off gesture, the fingertips roasted by some incredible heat. The fingertips were nothing more than white powder, the flesh of her knuckles charred and blistered. Joe stood and regarded her pathetic sticklike form and felt nothing more than a desolate sense of shock, a feeling that he’d torn through some protective veil and glimpsed something so monstrous and unnatural that his emotional equilibrium could never again return to normal. Sadie had worn a simple blue nightgown, but the gown had browned and scorched in several places, the hem having ridden up and revealed underwear that was soiled and crawling with ants. Numbly, Joe slumped down on the edge of the bed and felt something move beneath him. Gasping, he stumbled away and beheld a long black snake slithering out of the downhanging blanket like some insidious afterbirth. The snake’s tongue flicked, the sinuous body writhing slowly toward Sadie’s corpse. Joe wanted to trample it, to squish its virulent body before it crawled over the dead woman, but a faint sound made him freeze, a new terror washing over him.