Audrey’s Door

by Sarah Langan

  She moved fast. And then the floors rumbled: Audrey, darling. This time it wasn’t just Schermerhorn, but Clara, the children (Keith! Olivia! Kurt! Deirdre!), Loretta Parker, Martin Hearst, Evvie Waugh, and Francis Galton. The other tenants, dead and living, too. All different pitches, so dissonant as to be harmonious, but none quite human. It reminded her of the summertime language of locusts.

  She scooted faster. Vibrations roared through the floor, met the tips of her fingers and traveled back to her chest. Hot and terrible. The worm chewed. She felt it climb up her gut and expand in her chest, wriggling.

  And then, in the den, projector lights flickered. Against the cardboard door, a black-and-white film still shone. The picture showed a split-level ranch house and broken picket fence. A blond man and pretty woman with long, dark hair and dimples. They held a mewing infant in their arms.

  Audrey stopped to look. The image shook slightly, but she knew what it contained. Her family before it got broken. Audrey, a voice called through the walls and floors and even the air of 14B, only this time, its sound offered comfort. Tears came to her eyes. This time it was Betty.

  “Momma?” Audrey asked. The black-and-white image zoomed in on the woman and child. The man disappeared. So did the house, with its broken picket fence. In the picture, tiny red ants crawled across the baby’s skin.

  Finish the door, Audrey, so we can always be together. The vibrations murmured through the floors, caressing her hands and knees like a warm blanket, while against the door, Betty’s image was mute. Only her eyes moved. They followed Audrey like a Cheshire Cat clock.

  The worm gnawed on her organs, tiny little bites. “You’re not my mother. Betty’s gone. She abandoned me,” Audrey sniffled.

  You forgot your promise, but I didn’t. I kept that second-grade picture. You and me, forever. You betrayed me, Lamb. You left me alone in that terrible place. But I forgive you. Finish the door, Betty answered.

  The hall light flickered, then went out. Everything got dark, except for the image of Betty holding a baby. The camera zoomed closer. Pretty dimples, vacant smile. Audrey remembered the CAT scan, and the black wings, and that red-ant day in Hinton, when her whole life changed.

  “It was your madness chasing us. It was never after me, Momma, because I’m not crazy,” Audrey whispered.

  It was you, Audrey, the walls echoed with Betty’s voice.

  She remembered that day twenty years ago. There was more to the story than she’d always allowed herself to believe.

  Betty’s knife against her throat. Beads of blood. “Shhhh, Momma,” drunken young Audrey had whispered, when she’d finally mustered the courage to speak. “Shhhhh. It’s your Audrey.”

  Betty had lowered the knife a little, but not far enough. So Audrey had put her fingers between the blade and her skin, then eased down until she’d knelt over the broken floor. “I’ll help, Momma,” she’d said. “Look. We’ll work together.” And so, she’d lifted a clump of dirt. She’d put holes in her own house, just to pacify her maniac mother.

  “Look! There’s the monster!” Betty had cried twenty years ago, only it hadn’t been a monster—but an ant hive, from which an angry swarm had risen. Biting. Biting. They’d flooded the white tiles. Audrey had stamped her feet until the floor was red while Betty had fled. When it was over, the floor was a mess of gore, as if Audrey had done murder.

  The cop that showed up hadn’t just told her to wear turtlenecks, either. He’d written down the number for a children’s shelter. But like always, she’d stayed, and cleaned up the mess, and when Betty returned six weeks later sporting an oozing Playboy Bunny tattooed to her shoulder and a bad case of hep C in the making, she’d cleaned that up, too.

  “That’s why we always ran, Momma. The ants were always chasing your holes. It had nothing to do with me,” Audrey now said as she changed direction, and crawled knee over knee back into the den. Betty’s Cheshire eyes went left, then right. Left, then right.

  I miss you baby, the walls answered in Betty’s voice as the camera zoomed closer. From the bottom of the black and white image tiny insects began to crawl. The baby squealed.

  “You were sick, Momma. You were no good to me or anybody else,” she said, because she wished she’d said it back then instead of always playing along to keep the peace. Always pretending things were okay, even while her wrists had made a bathtub pink.

  The ants covered the baby’s swollen face as it raged. The image was still, but the sound carried through the floors and walls. A weeping, furious wail.

  We’re trapped in here, Lamb. Get us out, Betty said as the image zoomed, and the baby disappeared. If you build the door, we’ll go back to Wilmette, before the red ants came. Just you and me. We’ll live there forever, and you can always be my baby. Build the door.

  Sobbing, Audrey covered her ears. The camera zoomed closer. Now it was only Betty, thirty-four years ago. Pretty, with the world at her feet. Against the still frame, an ant darted across the white of her eye, and her skin wriggled.

  Audrey touched the image against cardboard. It was soft, like her mother’s skin. With her free hand, she lifted the rebar. A steel pole wrapped inside tense, sharp wire. Its opposite end was clogged with fleshy chunks of what looked like rust.

  Nobody loves you like we do. Nobody ever will. They’ll leave you, everyone one of them. Saraub. Jill. Even Jayne is already gone. But we’re here, Lamb of mine.

  If she smashed the rebar against the piano, she could use the wood to build a sturdy frame. But they’d known that, hadn’t they? Loretta and the inhabitants of The Breviary. That’s why they’d left her this bloody present. That’s why they’d asked her about Saraub; they’d wanted to make sure she was alone. That’s why they’d let her live here for so cheap, and why Edgardo was missing: he’d warned her.

  Aren’t you tired of fighting? No one else has had to work so hard for so little. You deserve this. Build the door, and you can rest. Momma will take care of you.

  Audrey looked at the cardboard construction and realized that it was wrong. Too perfectly flat, too sturdy. It didn’t adhere to The Breviary’s skews. Just like her dream of Clara’s door, it would fall apart as soon as it opened. It needed curves, and functional chaos. It needed an architect instead of an opera singer, or a snotty author of personal histories. She smiled when she understood that 14B had picked her because it meant she was the most special girl.

  Audrey hoisted the heavy rebar. The image zoomed closer. Ants scurried. Offscreen, an infant squawked, as if being burned. Betty’s face sagged. Her eyes turned black. Something was inside her, wearing her skin like a coat.

  Do it now, Audrey. There’s not much time. Even buildings have their beginnings and ends.

  Audrey blinked. Looked out the window at the driving rain. At her hands, full of tiny cactus wounds. Remembered the dream she’d had the night Betty died, “Better run, Lamb.” And those red ants in Hinton, she’d forgotten them, but they’d been real. They’d come out from a nest beneath the floor. Maybe it was even true that they’d followed Betty to every town, because not everyone is lucky enough to be born whole. Maybe some demons are real.

  I got tired of fighting, Lamb, the note had read.

  She understood then that this thing was not her mother. Nor was it Clara, or the tenants, or even Schermerhorn. This thing that called to her was The Breviary. But there was something The Breviary didn’t know because she had not guessed it herself, until now.

  She hated Betty Lucas. She wanted her dead. She’d always wanted her dead. Some nights in Yuma, and Hinton, and even Omaha, she’d imagined shoving a pillow over her Betty’s mouth while she slept. And every time she’d smoked a joint, or gone for a long walk, or gotten drunk, or cleaned a room twenty times, or even sliced her own skin, it had not been out of self-loathing, but to calm her own red ants, so she didn’t lose her temper and shove a knife through Betty’s throat.

  She lifted the rebar. Her blood ran hot in her veins as she swung. “I!” The rod reverberated
in her hands. The wires encasing it twanged against her palms, but her calluses were so thick they didn’t cut. She swung again: “Hate!” Swung again: “Ughhh! You!” Her whole body slammed, and then shivered along with the rebar. She swung again: “I hate you!” Again. Again. Again. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I don’t want to go back. I don’t want it fixed. It’s over. It’s dead. Why aren’t you?”

  She chopped Betty Lucas’ face. Her black-and-white-film-still eyes bugged in wild surprise. The image bled the color black down the side of the door. As it pooled to 14B’s floor, it turned to red. The red turned to tiny, pinching ants that marched down into the rotten hole, and inside the walls of The Breviary. The line thinned as Betty’s blood drained dry.

  “Hu! Ha!” she cried, as the last of the boxes fell. “Bye-bye!” Wolverine made a clump as he hit the ground. The hot-water faucet rolled lopsidedly from point to point, and her shouts became grunts, and sounds without meaning. And then simply gasping.

  All her life, she’d dreamed of raising her voice at Betty. Screaming. Reciting any one of the thousand speeches she’d memorized. Or simply asking, “This life you put me through, have you really convinced yourself that you did it because you love me?” But always, she’d stifled herself. Always, she’d let Betty run the show. Until now.

  She kept pounding until the boxes were tiny pieces on the floor that mixed with her clothes and stuck to the reopened and bloody wounds of her feet like homemade Band-Aids. Panting, too tired to strike one more time, she dropped the rebar.

  The door lay in a pile.

  “Fuck you,” she called to her mother, and 14B, and The Breviary, and even God, who ought, once in a while, to take sides.

  Audrey, the walls whispered through the vibrations in the floor. It wasn’t her mother’s voice anymore—it had given that up. It was Schermerhorn, and Clara, and the children. It was the tenants, past and present, too. She could hear their thoughts. All one overpowering thought. The floor rumbled. The walls shook. The vibrations were a furious scream:

  BUILD IT, YOU BITCH!

  For once, she trusted herself and didn’t hesitate. She ran. The walls went red behind her. Water poured out from the open bathroom door as she passed. Her curiosity did not get the better of her. She did not look inside at the tub. Only heard the sounds of struggle. The sickly-sweet voice of the little girl who, in her terror, had accidentally suffocated her baby sister in her arms. “I squeezed too tight, Momma,” hard-knock Olivia cried.

  And then, the monster, in reply. Her voice strangely kind, like she was doing them all a favor. “Into the tub with you, Ol-lovely, and it will all be over. We’ll be together forever.”

  Audrey turned the handle and escaped 14B.

  31

  Do Black Sheep Dream?

  Out!

  She shut 14B’s door behind her, sweat dripping down her brow, arms and back aching from the weight of the rebar. The hall was lit pink as a little girl’s bedroom. She stabbed the elevator button, decided it would take too long, and raced for the stairs.

  As she ran, she passed 14E, which was dark and ajar. Jayne. Hadn’t she mentioned nightmares since Clara’s death? And not sleeping? Hadn’t she been stuck in this miserable place all week, on a wounded knee?

  Audrey swung open the stairwell exit. Jayne was a big girl. She could take care of herself.

  The metal fire steps rattled. Her bare feet burned as sores reopened, and she left a trail of blood. Already she knew what she’d do when she got out. Have Tom’s Diner call Saraub, and if they refused, call the cops.

  Rattle. Rattle. Twelfth floor. She slowed and thought of something. Smashed hula girl still lay in a pile in the hall. Given her ample free time, there had to be a reason that Jayne hadn’t knocked, or written a note, or cleaned it up.

  Jayne. That nitwit redhead. Audrey cursed her, then sprinted back to the fourteenth floor. She swung open 14E.

  “Jayne, are you here?” she called.

  No answer, but something in there creaked. It sounded like a rope. While the common hall was lit by a red bulb, once she walked inside 14E, the light left. She looked behind her. Saw the red carpet and 14B’s shut door. Then faced Jayne’s hall again, where it was so dark that she could not see her hands.

  Creeeeaaaak! The sound came from high up, and about twenty feet ahead. What was it?

  She reached for a light. Her hands traced cool plaster. Then she remembered that unlike her own apartment, there was no switch, just a string hanging from a bulb about fifteen feet down. She walked farther inside with her hands spread wide. They spanned the width of the crooked hall while she slid her feet across the uneven floor instead of lifting them, to keep from tripping. With each slide, the mouthlike wounds on the pads of her feet gaped, trickling sticky blood between her toes.

  Let her be okay. Let us both be okay, she mouthed, though she knew better than to speak, and break the silence. Her heart palpitated faster than when she’d smashed the door, because in this slow-moving dark, she had time to think. The sweat poured from her brow, as if she were still hacking, and she tried not to think about what she’d just come from, because what lay ahead might be worse.

  Shhp-shhp was the sound her feet made as they slid. The farther she got, the more distant the common hall appeared. Its light was a pinprick. She wanted very much to run back and meet it. Live in the light, where it was safe. She bit her lower lip to keep from hyperventilating, and reminded herself to breathe. She couldn’t leave, because up ahead, she smelled freshly smoked Winston cigarettes: Jayne was here.

  Creeeaaaak!

  What was that? A part of her guessed, but the rest of her didn’t want to know. She moved faster. Shhp!-shhp! Then bit her lip, and listened. The sound continued:

  Shhp!-shhp!

  “Ohhh—” she started, then slapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her own gasp: something was in here with her.

  Shhp!-shhp! It came a little closer. The sound was like sandpaper against marble. It came from behind, which meant that it had trapped her inside. She hitched her breath—the beginning wail of a crying jag, then squeezed her mouth and nose together to keep still. Maybe it couldn’t see in this dark, either. Maybe if she just stayed quiet…

  She lifted her feet. Placed them delicately back down as she walked. The thing followed. Shhp!-shhp!

  So dark in here. Oh, God, and the air, so wet. Where was Jayne?

  Shhp!-Shhp!

  What was that? She let go of her mouth, and her body reacted before her mind could censor it. “Jayne!” she screamed so loud and raggedly that her chest hurt from the expulsion of breath.

  Silence answered. And then—Shhp-shhp! Shhp-shhp! Shhp-shhp!—it moved faster, and with more urgency. It was coming for her!

  She kept going. Bare feet, gently picking their way through scattered objects. Something soft. Another thing, hard, that almost cut. Tears fell like bathwater. She wanted to slide down the side of the wall and give up. Curl into a ball, just like back in the Midwest, and hope her mother didn’t see her.

  Shhp!-shhp! Shhp!-shhp! It was so close. She could feel its eyes, searching.

  She stretched her hands out and felt the walls on either side. Picked up her pace. Behind, like a long-distance dance partner, the monster moved faster, too: Shhp!-Shhp!

  Suddenly, the left plaster wall was gone. Her hand dangled. She let out a high-pitched breath that made a sound, “Huuhoooh!”

  On the left, a small bedroom. It was bright, like a picture from a movie in a dark theatre, even though the hall remained as ink. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no.”

  All those magazines Jayne had collected. They weren’t scattered anymore. They were stacked and taped together into a four-foot-by-two-foot square against the wall. Someone had tried to rend a hole through them for a handle, but the paper was too thick. A tiny door.

  She let out a cry. “Jaaa—” she said, then bit down on her lower lip, because the thing was even closer. She could smell it: old, desiccated skin.

  Shhp
-shhp! Shhp-shhp!

  Faster! Another step. Another. As fast as she could, she greased the floor with her blood. Her hand slipped again. Another room. The master bedroom. Bright in there, too. Unmade bed. Wet rubber mattress. All the family photos that had been magnetized to the refrigerator now lay scattered on the floor. In every one of them, Jayne’s face had been crossed out with thick, pink pen.

  Another step. Another. She raced. Her chest cramped like a heart attack, but still she kept going.

  SHHP!-SHHP! The thing was so close that she could feel the floor vibrating as it raced. In a panic, she gave up her silence: “Jayne!”

  Up ahead, something creaked.

  “Hold on, Jayne. Please, hold on!”

  Panting. Sweat dripping. Her heart slowing now, even though she was more terrified than ever, because her body was spent. Just a little farther, she promised herself. Just a few more steps. Because she’d taken—how many? Eleven. The light pull had to be close. She guessed eight more steps.

  Seven. Six Five.

  Shhp!-shhp! If it extended its arms, it could reach out and grab her. She picked up her pace and tried to put distance between them. Tear down this place, God. She pleaded, a silent nonsensical prayer. Swallow it. Devour it, so that it never was, and never will be.

  Three more steps. She’d pulled ahead of it! But then, shit! Her right foot hooked inside something cold and hard. She spun, but the cold wouldn’t let go. She lost her balance. Fell on something hollow and metal. Its rattle echoed throughout the hall. So loud!

  Shhp!-shhp!

  Metal, everywhere she reached. Her first thought was that she’d landed in a graveyard for the tenants who’d died in The Breve. Over the years their bones, and the metal rods and screws that had held them together had piled here. The thing that was making that sound (Shhp!-shpp! Shhp!-shhp!) was a human wraith, guarding its treasure lair.