Soon after, Caleb brought home a friend for the first time, a cheerful boy named Mark from school. The two boys spent the afternoon playing video games on the floor of the Butler living room, squealing with laughter as they tried to outrace and outfight each other on the small screen of the Butler’s flat panel Sony TV.
When Angelo came home and saw his brother with Mark, he froze in the doorway.
Bianca, who’d stood in the kitchen at the time, later convinced herself she hadn't seen what she thought she'd seen. She told herself that she'd been quite far away from Angelo and hadn't gotten a good look at his expression. How silly could she be, to think that such naked hatred and jealousy would ever appear on Angelo's face! Why, he barely showed any expression at all, usually. He'd only smile or frown once every other month or so.
Yet Bianca couldn't shake off her uneasiness. It was normal for siblings and good friends to feel some measure of possessiveness, but that look had been beyond anything Bianca had ever seen in real life. Stronger even than the look her first boyfriend had given her when he'd found her in an empty classroom at school with another boy's hand up her blouse in 9th grade.
It doesn't matter, Bianca told herself firmly. It doesn't matter because I didn't see what I thought I saw. Angelo never gave Caleb that look. I made a mistake.
About a week later Mark left his house to go to school and never made it there. No trace of him, not a scrap of cloth nor a lock of hair, was ever found.
The night Mark's parents announced him missing by hysterically calling everyone they knew, Bianca watched Angelo console the distraught Caleb and told herself over and over again that he couldn’t have had anything to do with Mark’s vanishing. She tried to focus on the compassion Angelo showed, the way he held his brother close and stroked his hair and back, and told herself that Angelo was indeed an angel, her angel. No angel would do such a heinous thing as murder a child.
For all she knew Mark fell into a ditch somewhere, and no person had done anything to him. Yes, that made sense. Mark had been gangly, all elbows and huge feet, and hadn't struck Bianca as very bright. It had to be Mark's own stupidity and clumsiness that was at fault, not her son.
Caleb buried his tear-stained face into Angelo's chest, and for a second, Bianca saw her elder son's mouth curve into a smile. Disquiet washed over her, scattering her fragile surety — had that smile been as triumphant as it looked? But no, no, Angelo was just smiling because Caleb had finally stopped crying. Her perfect son would never do anything…inappropriate.
Caleb never brought home another friend.
Some nights, when Bianca couldn't sleep, she heard panting and groaning from the brothers’ room. They were passionate sounds that she faintly recognized as sexual, even though she and Jeffrey hadn’t been intimate since conceiving Caleb. There were whispers in the dark, soft sounds that Bianca could have passed off as talking except that gasping always followed. She heard huffing and bed springs squeaking, and little whimpers and pleas that cut through the night air.
Bianca heard them as plainly as she heard the TV on her dresser. She heard when Caleb squealed Angelo and when Angelo whispered things like beautiful and need and love just a little louder and more forcefully than the rest of his words.
Caleb began acting much less lively at the same time the noises began. He grew thin and wan, so that he looked less like an angel and more like a ghost. Bianca thought if she took her eyes off of him for too long, he might disappear. His temperament changed as well. The cheerful, curious boy he had been disappeared, seemingly overnight, replaced by a sullen, joyless lump. He was a hunk of empty flesh that barely got up unless someone forced him and then acted as though it was a tremendous effort just to cross a room.
Whenever Angelo reached out to touch him, Caleb flinched.
He's just a teenager, Bianca told herself, most teenagers are moody and don't like their families.
Still, she decided the time had come for them to spend a little less time together. She informed her sons they were getting too big to share the same room; 16 and 13 was plenty old enough for them to have their own space. Caleb looked at Angelo without saying a word, obviously expecting his elder brother to answer for them both. Whatever Angelo said, Caleb would abide by. Bianca despaired to realize she had no influence at all over her youngest son anymore. Had she ever had any?
“That’s all right,” Angelo told her, not bothering to look at Caleb or ask his opinion. “There’s no need to go to all the trouble of moving and re-arranging and making space. We’re okay where we are.”
Caleb looked back to his mother and nodded. The law had been laid out. There was no more to be said, even if he did have a haunted, defeated look in his eyes that Bianca knew deep down would remain forever. It would be a scar on his soul.
No! Bianca told herself, No! Don't be dramatic. Whatever reason Angelo had for not wanting to let Caleb out of his room, it couldn’t be anything bad. Angelo and Caleb probably just sat up at night and had brotherly talks or played video games. They had so few friends; naturally they wouldn't want to be separated.
And so what if they did engage in a little bit of unusual activity upon occasion? Children experimented naturally, didn’t they? In her childhood, Bianca had explored new boundaries and shown curiosity with friends on occasion. That was what children did, and it was perfectly normal that her sons should do the same. That is, if they were doing anything – which they weren’t.
The next day, Bianca bought the most powerful sleeping pills and the thickest ear plugs she could find. She used them every night. Even in a perfect world a person needed a sound night’s sleep.
Bianca knew her sons spent a lot of time wandering around town, and she sometimes wondered if they went to any particular place. Some nights when they came home Caleb would be shaking, and Angelo would have blood under his fingernails. Bianca wouldn’t think anything of it during the day — she trusted her boys, after all! — but there were some mornings when she woke up, screaming from nightmares full of blood and torture and dismemberment.
How unpleasant, she would think as she huddled against her headboard and trembled. Perhaps it was a reaction to something she'd seen on TV.
She discovered her sons by accident one day on her way to pick Jeffrey up from work. Though she knew he'd wrecked his car, she was a little surprised he’d called her for help. Jeffrey rarely came home to sleep any longer; it wasn’t unusual for him to spend several days out. Bianca preferred it when he did. Her fairy tale marriage was easier to maintain when he wasn’t around (not that there was a problem with that, it was just what happened to couples as time went by, perfectly normal).
Bianca planned on swinging by Dave’s Auto Shop on the way to see just how badly her husband had damaged his car. To her irritation, she missed her turnoff and wound up turning onto the next off ramp instead, eventually exiting onto a poorly-maintained, nearly-abandoned street without another car in sight.
She passed by an old, stooped woman with sagging jowls and wild, stringy hair sitting on the side of the road. Bianca couldn’t see the woman very well, but somehow she felt the woman’s eyes on her, deep blue orbs that examined her very soul and found it wanting.
You’re a bad mother, Bianca Butler! A bad mother!
Biting her lip to keep from screaming, Bianca fought to keep her hands steady on the wheel as panic jerked at her gut. She pulled the car over to the curb as soon as the old woman was out of sight just long enough to slap herself as hard as she could. A bad mother, what a ridiculous idea! Her sons were clean and well fed and brought home excellent grades. She was a fine mother!
Shaking her head and favoring her stinging left cheek, Bianca took deep breaths to calm herself and looked around. Overgrown grass lined the road along with debris from other drivers unlucky enough to have come this way. There was the occasional deserted, crumbling building that had probably housed businesses back when people still lived in this area.
It’s amazing how quickly terrain can change, tho
ught Bianca as she drove slowly on, watching for the next turn back onto the highway (it would be easy to miss on this mess of a road). She was still so close to her house, little more than a mile away, and yet she felt like she’d stumbled into another country.
It was, thus, that much more surprising to see a familiar dark head disappear into a rusting former garage half-a-block ahead.
If Bianca had been sure that she’d seen one of her sons, she would never have investigated, but she wasn't sure who she'd seen, and curiosity compelled her to look closer. She pulled up to the side of the garage, stopped the car, and pulled the key from the ignition. She didn’t know why she was being so cautious and quiet. If it wasn't her son inside, she could leave. If it was her son, there would be nothing to fear.
The garage door was rusted shut, but the business entrance beside it was open and almost falling off its hinges. Bianca pushed through without making any noise by putting pressure on the side. Once in the doorway, she blinked to adjust her eyesight to the dark.
Then, she screamed.
Oh God this isn’t real, this can’t be true I’m having a nightmare, I’ll wake up any second…
In the gloom sat Angelo and Caleb, the latter sitting behind the former and clinging to his back. Before Angelo lay a large cat, a discarded syringe, and many, many sharp objects.
Bianca entered just in time to see Angelo slice into the cat’s midsection. It gave a drugged kick of its fat grey legs, and Bianca prayed that whatever Angelo injected it with took away pain, as well as motor function.
All around her boys were signs they'd cut into plenty of animals before this one. Spots of blood, chunks of fur, toolboxes and gloves; all were scattered around, denying Bianca any chance to pretend she looked at a one-time fluke or anything other than regular, premeditated torture.
When Bianca screamed Caleb’s first response was to scoot even closer to his brother and hide behind him while Angelo maneuvered himself between Caleb and the door. It was hard to say which brother looked more surprised when they saw who had found them, but Caleb grew fearful while Angelo's usual non-expression slid quickly back into place.
Angelo disentangled himself from Caleb and strode to his mother, authority in his every step. It wasn’t until he slapped her that she realized she was still screaming.
“I — oh glory, Angelo, what are you doing?”
“Calm down,” said Angelo. His breathing was regular and even, and if Bianca had dared to feel for his pulse, she felt horribly certain it wouldn’t be a beat faster than usual. “You did this same thing in high school science, didn’t you?”
“S-science?”
“Yeah,” said Angelo, ignoring the struggles and mewls of the cat behind him. Blood flowed from its split belly and onto the floor, spreading out towards Caleb's sneakers. Looking down and shuddering, Caleb scooted backwards until he'd squashed himself into a far corner. “I just want to see how things work.”
Bianca hesitated. It was a terrible excuse, and her rational mind found a million holes in it, but...
A science project, of course! A smart boy like Angelo would want to learn more than his teachers could teach him in school. Studying by himself showed initiative, a determination to better himself that most young men didn't have. Good for him.
Bianca began to calm down until she looked past Angelo’s shoulder to see Caleb. One look at him broke her heart.
There was a sick desperation on his face that was even more disturbing to Bianca than the cat’s struggles. His eyes were wide and his body trembled. His gaze pleaded with her for help.
He was trapped, Bianca realized, as trapped by Angelo as she was by her marriage. Angelo dominated him so completely that Caleb didn’t know up from down unless Angelo told him which was which. Angelo's actions scared Caleb as badly as they did her. So here and now, he was begging her to have the strength to be strong for him. He needed her to be strong because Angelo had carefully prevented him from being strong on his own.
Save me, he cried, without saying a word.
Bianca felt a rush of anger at Caleb. How dare he put her into such an uncomfortable position? It was just selfish!
Angelo gently took his mother’s chin and forced her gaze back to him. She studied his perfect features and sighed; her anger melted away, replaced by a feeling of peace. No one so beautiful could be bad.
“Go home, now,” said Angelo, voice calm and soothing and eminently reasonable. “We’ll be home in time for dinner.”
Angelo knew her well. It was all about being home in time for dinner, all about calling her sons by pet names, and kissing them goodbye when they began each new day. All about going through the motions of being a fairy tale family.
Bianca took one last, brief look at Caleb. He sat frozen, huddled in on himself in the corner, throwing away whatever dignity Angelo had left him to implore his mother, his last hope, to save his soul.
Bianca turned away from Caleb and left the garage. She kissed her husband on the cheek when she picked him up and did not tell him what she’d seen.
By nightfall, she’d decided she hadn’t seen it at all.
It was on Angelo’s 21st birthday that reality intruded into Bianca's life. The day started out well, quiet but fun. With Caleb just graduated from high school and Angelo free of university classes for the afternoon and evening, the three of them had been able to go out to dinner to celebrate. Caleb rarely spoke as Angelo and Bianca chattered about his algebra classes and her cooking experiments, but grinned the whole time like a dog anticipating some great treat, barely able to contain itself for excitement. Bianca felt happy to see him light up that way, since Caleb usually seemed so gloomy. Perhaps he looked forward to his post-graduate life.
At 8 p.m., Bianca took her sleeping pills like always before going to the kitchen for a glass of warm milk. She noticed that she felt tired more quickly than usual, but it wasn’t until her hand grew so numb she dropped her glass that she realized something was wrong.
Bianca stumbled over to the counter, struggling to keep her vision from blacking out completely. Heedless of the shards of broken glass scattered about the floor, she reached out and grabbed the phone hanging by the sink, her vision wavering in and out.
Angelo’s hand reached from around the doorway like a disembodied limb flying out from the darkness, and pulled the cord from the wall.
Bianca began gasping, her lungs struggling for air that had been so easy to take in only moments ago. She collapsed to her knees as Angelo dropped the phone cord to the ground, strolled further into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. “Caleb, do you want a sandwich or mac-and-cheese?”
Bianca fell onto her back and stared up to see Caleb follow his brother in with his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. He told Angelo that he wanted mac-and-cheese, but his eyes were only for his mother. They were so full of hate Bianca felt her chest burn.
Bianca understood. She had abandoned him his whole life. She'd let him be enslaved by his brother, and this was his revenge.
Bianca felt strangely relieved. No more sleeping pills or long days of pretending her husband wasn't avoiding her. No more sudden stabs of guilt that came to her randomly and brought her to her knees with pain. No more worries about holding her family together. All those choices had been taken away from her, and for a single, glorious moment she felt liberated in a way she hadn’t since Angelo’s birth.
But, then, Angelo grabbed his brother’s arm and pulled Caleb to him. Angelo kissed him like a starving man feeding from Caleb's mouth. Bianca saw Caleb’s posture droop in resigned surrender and knew he would always be Angelo’s dog. He had given up all hope the day she’d turned away from him in the abandoned garage, and though he hated Bianca for it enough to help Angelo kill her - or had it been his idea?- there wasn’t enough hate in the world to set him free. Angelo would go out into the world and do abominable things, and Caleb would follow him, and fall with him, when they were brought down...if they ever were.
Bianca didn'
t feel liberated after Angelo released Caleb. There would be no peace for her in this life or the next. She began to see fire erupting and spreading from the corners of her kitchen, the fires of Hell come to claim her.
Hyperventilating, wanting to scream but unable to gather the strength, Bianca tried to deny reality one last time. This had to be an accident, a mistake, a dream...but she couldn’t lie to herself any longer. She died moments later with her eyes wide open to the truth and her fairy tale in ruins, Hellfire swallowing her soul. The last thing she saw was Angelo, holding Caleb to him and staring down at her over his shoulder, red eyes dancing with derision and a promise of tortures to come.
Cabin Fever
By J. Franklin Evans
It was supposed to be a vacation.
I'd just lost my job and hadn’t been able to find another. My wife Becca was the sole breadwinner in our household, and she didn't let me forget it for one second. Still, this was a chance to escape our troubles, at least for a few days. It was a chance to get away and sort things out.
Of course, we were piled into Clarke's brand new huge SUV, along with his wife Sandra, heading for God knows what.
Clarke was my best and oldest friend from 8th grade. He’d been my constant companion for all of these years – the one human being who knew me and all of my secrets both good and bad.
Clarke had the keys to the cabin in the mountains owned by Nick, his boss--my former boss--near a stream where, he said, one could experience the best trout fishing in the state.
It was a long drive to our destination – six hours – and we had to park next to the road which was still a couple of miles from the front door. We, then, had to unload our baggage and carry or drag it up a path, through the woods. It was not going to be an easy start to our serene tranquility.
The road wound through some hilly country with mountains towering on the horizon. The cabin was old, Clarke had told us, saying that Nick had inherited it from his father, who had, in turn, inherited it from his father. Clarke and Sandra had spent quite a lot of time there over the years.
Journalstone's 2010 Warped Words for Twisted Minds Page 18