Stephenie dropped the photograph and kept running. But she was lost now. She had no idea where her sanctuary was hiding or how she was going to get there. Everything looked the same. Every hallway was identical. She ran and cursed and ran some more. Then she turned a corner a felt her heart drop into her feet.
She was face to face with a woman that looked just like her.
No, that wasn’t right. The woman didn’t look like her.
It was her––it was Stephenie.
The woman was dressed the same. She was hobbling; her foot had been wounded in the exact same spot. She had her hair pulled into a ponytail and her shirt was still wet from having washed it.
There were differences too. For one, this new Stephenie had a face that was really, really pale. Not a little pale, white. Blood was pouring from two separate places: a wound on her hand and a wound on her arm. The blood was all over her shirt and face. It was in her hair. It was dripping onto the floor in bright red bunches.
Looking at herself, Stephenie felt the air fall out of her, like her lungs had just gotten a flat. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing; she couldn’t believe it!
But the other Stephenie was even more freaked out––the other Stephenie, not her.
The other Stephenie smacked her gory hands against the sides of her head. Blood speckled the wall in a line. Slurring her words this new Stephenie screamed, “Oh my God! Oh my God! This can’t be right! Look at what’s fucking happening!” Her hands became red fists, shaking in the air like mad. Blood splashed in generous amounts around her. She punched herself in the head and she spit whatever was in her mouth right in Stephenie’s face. She said, “Now do you understand, huh? Do you? Fuck!” Then she turned and ran off, speeding around the first corner she found.
Stephenie couldn’t take it any more. She needed out. She needed to escape.
She slapped a hand on a doorknob and turned it.
The door was locked.
There was another door beside the first, plus two more on the far side of the hall. She tried her luck a second time and came up lucky. The door opened wide. The knob slipped from her fingers. And when she saw a full-sized wolf standing in the center of room, looking at her like it had found its next meal, she nearly fell over.
6
The wolf was easily half the size of a mountain lion. It was big and brown. Its eyes were icy and blue. When it growled, the damn thing sounded like a chainsaw chopping down a tree.
Stephenie backed away, across the hall, wondering what she was supposed to do. After all, how do you fight a hungry wolf?
A question came: how do you know its hungry?
The answer came right after: the wolf licked its muzzle and stepped forward. Its snout curled into wrinkles and Stephenie got a first-rate look at teeth that could chew through steel.
In desperation, she closed her eyes and said, “I never opened that fucking door. The door is closed. Oh please Lord; the door is closed! I never opened it! It’s closed! And this is just a dream, or some fucked up medication. I never opened the door! I never touched that door!”
Stephenie opened her eyes cringing, only to find the door hadn’t moved.
The wolf stepped into the hall.
Stephenie spun around. She grabbed a doorknob, praying for a miracle. The knob turned beneath her fingers and she counted herself lucky.
The wolf growled.
She pushed on the door as the animal made its move.
She felt paws crashing into her back and she fell forward. Her ankle crunched beneath her and she let out a squeal. Her body slammed against the floor and the animal went past, snapping its teeth in the air. She felt its breath on the back of her neck and she braced for the worst. A fraction of a second slipped by and when she looked up, the beast was landing on it paws and sliding forward.
She swallowed back a scream, figuring her next scream would be her last. She thought she’d be dead inside of two minutes with her throat ripped out and blood rolling across the floor in a thick, hot wave unless she found a better plan than screaming. But what was that plan? Fact was, she didn’t know.
Getting her throat ripped out didn’t happen.
What happened was this: the wolf snapped its head in a different direction, then it started growling and barking and its hair stood high upon its back.
There was something else in the room, something Stephenie couldn’t see.
The wolf didn’t like it.
Stephenie figured the thing, whatever it was––and she really couldn’t see it, unless she wanted to step into the room and snatch a look––might be some type of monster. She wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad. Either way, it gave her a little breathing room, which she quickly squandered like someone without five cents worth of brains rattling inside her empty head.
She watched the wolf growl. She watched it show its teeth. She watched it move towards the thing that was making it upset.
Then she wondered, what the hell am I doing, waiting in line to be eaten?
She pushed herself away from the door and out of the wolf’s view. Her face was masked in grave fear. Her eyebrows were lifted. She stood, biting her bottom lip, trying to suck up the pain in her foot. She needed to close the door and contain the beast but was unable to find the courage to do so. She started limping, walking––trying to keep her feet quiet. Walking became running. Running became pain. Pain became screaming. At one point her ankle twisted the wrong way and she went sprawling to the floor. She cried out loudly. And when she pulled herself to her feet her ankle hurt more than it had since the injury occurred. For a moment she thought it was broken. It wasn’t; she kept moving. She tried a door and found it locked. And when she turned around to see if she was being followed, the wolf was standing about seventy feet away, looking at her with its lips pulling away from its teeth and its ears pointing straight up. Its eyes gleamed; they grew wide and bulged from its head like a pair of full moons. Its tail was tucked down between its legs, nervous like. But it wasn’t nervous. Stephenie was the nervous one. She was quite literally ready to wet her pants in fear.
“Oh shit,” she said.
Then she ran a few feet, slapped her hand on another doorknob and tried her luck again. The door wouldn’t open. Across the hall was another door. She grabbed the knob and hoped for the best. Locked.
The wolf was trotting now, soon it would be on top of her, eating her alive, drinking her blood, chewing the meat from her bones. She didn’t want that. Oh sweet merciful hamburgers, she really didn’t want that.
She ran another fifteen feet and came to another door. She slammed her hand upon the knob and turned it. The door was unlocked.
Thank God. It was opening for her.
The wolf ran faster. It was close, less than a few feet away. It growled and barked and when it leapt into the air, its mouth was wide open.
Stephenie could see the wolf from the corner of her eye. Screaming, she pushed on the door and blasted through the doorway like a bullet. And before she knew whether she was in a safe place or not, she slammed the door shut.
7
There was a moment of total confusion, followed by a large pair of hands grabbing Stephenie by the shoulders.
“Come now, my Lady,” the man grabbing her said. His accent was one Stephenie didn’t recognize. It sounded like old English, maybe Scottish, or maybe a bastardized version of both together.
Stephenie said, “What?”
He pushed her forward and she found herself walking. Beneath her feet was a dirt path. On her left there were hundreds of people. On her right there were hundreds more. They looked like villagers from a time long forgotten. Most were dirty and sick and dressed in rags. Some looked mean enough to fistfight a kitten.
Stephenie, still finding her bearings, focused on a single man. The man was tall and slim and was dressed in big, baggy everything. He had a two-inch beard that looked more itchy than attractive, and he was eating an ear of corn, raw, straight from a cob that still had dry husks
hanging off the handle.
She focused on another, a woman.
The woman had long grey hair that hung down to her waist and whiskers on her chin. She might have been as young as fifty but her face was so weathered and wrinkled that she looked a hundred or more. She wore no shoes. Her entire ensemble consisted of something that looked like a dirty toga that had been dragged through the mud and kicked down a mountain.
Stephenie lifted her head and looked to the sky.
Her mouth dropped open.
She was in a village. Vultures circled in the winds, high above. The sky wasn’t dark, but overcast. Raindrops were small enough to seem like mist. It wasn’t raining yet, but soon enough it would be.
Above the crowd on her left, Stephenie could see a bell tower, a bunch of dead trees and a row of houses that seemed ready to fall over. Most of the homes were no better than a shack. Behind the crowd on her right there was a graveyard and a church that was big and gothic and undeniably creepy. It loomed over the street like a sickle over the Grim Reaper.
The people standing along the path stepped away, parting like Stephenie carried the bubonic plague on her lips. Some were yelling. Some were waving their fists and shouting obscenities.
Stephenie saw a woman that looked like a witch, standing next to a broken fence. She had a wart on her nose, another on her chin, and a hump the size of a soccer ball growing on her back. Her eyebrows were thick enough to keep her face warm at night. She wore a black dress and black boots that went up to her knees. She had a leash wrapped around a hand that looked like a talon. The leash wasn’t attached to a dog, but to a baby pig that kicked and squealed and tried to escape.
“ ‘Member me?” The witch said with a cackle. “Did ya lookin the baffroom, dearie? Did ya? Did ya find ya daughter with ‘er throat cut open and ‘er eyes scooped out? Was she in da killin’ box? Are ya havin’ a good time?”
Before Stephenie had a chance to place the voice (but she knew that voice; oh yes she did) she was shoved ahead.
Still eyeing the crowd, she saw a man that was missing a handful of teeth. The few Chiclets that remained were blacker than the witch’s boots. The man had one hand on his hip, and an arm wrapped around the nastiest woman Stephenie had ever seen.
The woman’s face was bloated and blotchy and covered in bright red pimples. Her hair was so wild that an eagle could have nested in it and invited friends over for dinner. She wore nothing on her top half; her fat and unsightly breasts hung to her ample belly for all the world to see. They were streaked with veins and filth; her nipples were the size of pancakes.
Stephenie turned away.
She watched a man with a long beard punch a child in the face. The child was skinny and naked and went down in a hurry. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth; he couldn’t have been older than five.
A man with a leg lopped off at the knee threw a rotten tomato, and screamed as it soared from his fingers. His aim was true. The projectile caught Stephenie in the chin and exploded on impact. She stumbled back, more surprised than hurt.
Howls of laughter mixed with shrieks of approval erupted from the crowd.
The man behind Stephenie pushed her forward. He mumbled something under his breath that sounded like a curse.
Stephenie tried to wipe the foul smelling vegetable from her skin. Only then did she discover that her hands were bound together and tied to her waist with rope. She said, “What’s happening to me?”
Rotten tomato juice dripped from her chin.
The big man grunted, pushed her again.
And a boy––not much older than Carrie––pulled away from his mother and came running; he had no shoes on his feet. Instead, he wore sacks designed to hold grain. They were tied at the knee with twine. When he arrived at Stephenie’s side he kicked her in the shin with his sack and the crowd roared with appreciation.
Stephenie was shocked. She was outraged. She looked into the horde and saw one man raise a bottle to his lips and another snatch it from his hand.
The boy’s mother came stomping towards her with both hands on her hips. She was dressed in a cloth so dirty and chocked full of holes it wasn’t fit to be worn by a rabid dog with an advanced case of leprosy. She grabbed the child by the ear and dragged him away. The child meowed like a wildcat in heat and the crowd roared once again, this time in amusement.
On the heels of that, a goat ran onto the path bleating. The owner nabbed it and dragged the goat away, never for a moment looking in Stephenie’s direction.
The place was a madhouse; that much was obvious. But why was she here?
Stephenie followed the path with her eyes. She looked through the people and saw where she was headed; her throat felt unexpectedly dry.
The gallows.
Oh God, they were taking her to the gallows pole.
Fear gripped Stephenie completely. She twisted and turned and tried to break free.
The man with the large hands wouldn’t allow it. He wrapped his fingers around her neck and choked her until she couldn’t see. And when he released his hands she was walking up a staircase, wincing in pain.
Before she could voice a complaint or construct a plan for escape, she was looking down at the townsfolk with a noose around her neck. She felt it tighten; felt it tighten again. She could see a windmill in the distance; its blades moved slowly. The setting sun behind the structure was almost beautiful. The vultures circling above the gallows were not.
A voice came and she snapped her head towards the sound.
There was a priest standing to her right, telling her to be strong, telling her to cast Satan from her heart and beg the Lord’s everlasting forgiveness. If only she would denounce Satan, she would find eternal peace. He begged it of her.
She said, “You don’t understand. I shouldn’t be here. I’m innocent.”
“Innocent,” the priest said, nodding his head and pursing his lips. “Yes, innocent.” Apparently he had heard that one before.
Stephenie lowered her eyes.
Another voice came. It was male. “Hello Stephenie. They got you too, huh? Whatcha do, kill somebody?”
She looked left, towards the man’s hands first; they were tied together. And when she looked up she saw an old man with a flat nose, small lips, and a scar that started at his chin and went all the way to his ear. His teeth were small and sharp. He had a nest of white hair bunched on top of his head like Albert Einstein. Oh shit. It was Grandpa Ray, the man she had seen in the painting, the one she considered a madman.
“Grandpa?” Stephenie said.
“Yes darlin’,” the man said. His eyes seemed to be filled with shame. “It’s me. I guess it don’t matter much if ya killed somebody or not. You’re here now… here with the rest of us. Reasons aren’t really important, I suppose. Perhaps they never are.”
Stephenie’s mouth fell open. She didn’t know what to say.
There was a man standing in front of Stephenie and Grandpa Ray. He was talking to the crowd, getting them excited. He looked and sounded like a politician and was saying something about responsibility and Satan and the difference between right and wrong. His voice was loud and firm. It chilled Stephenie to the bone.
Stephenie didn’t care what the man was saying.
And Grandpa Ray cared less than that.
The look in his eyes suggested he heard it all before.
He said, “Don’t believe the stuff they’ve told you over the years, okay? I tried, darlin’. I’m not a bad man… and if I am, well then, I never meant to be. I tried to be good. I tried to be the best man I could, but I guess you could say I wasn’t always in control. It was like… oh, I don’t know… like I had someone whisperin’ in my ear half my life, telling me what to do, what to think. The voice kept telling me that the bastards shouldn’t get away with it, you know? The voices were tellin’ me to do things I knew was wrong. But at the time, they didn’t seem wrong, not really wrong anyhow. They seemed like, oh… like I was supposed to do them, if you can dig it. I guess
sometimes life blows in your direction; sometimes it blows against. And sometimes a man like me finds himself doing things, even when he knows he shouldn’t be doin’ them. I did some terrible things in my life, darlin’. I know I have, and from the look in your eyes you know it too. If I could take back my mistakes I would, you better believe it. I’d take ‘em back in a heartbeat. I can’t though; Lord knows it’s too late for that now. He turned his back on me.” The old man nodded. “On us, I guess. He turned his back on us, Stephenie. I’ve always loved you though, darlin’. I hope ya know that. I still love ya. Maybe now you’ll forgive your grandpa for being the way he was created, the way God made ‘em. Maybe now you’ll understand.”
Grandpa Ray looked at the crowd. He pushed his shoulders out and lifted his chin, like he had unloaded a great burden that had been on his mind for a hundred years. He almost looked proud then, proud and strong, like he was happy to admit the things he’d done hadn’t been perfect.
A sack was placed over Stephenie’s head as she was looking at Grandpa Ray, wondering what to say. The sack was not unlike the one the boy had been wearing on his feet. It smelled like a barnyard.
The crowd roared once the sack was in place, sounding like sports fans at a championship game.
She heard a man say, “Untie their hands.”
A moment later someone was working the rope. Might have been the priest; she did not know. Once her hands were untied, the countdown began.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
The crowd roared. Some of them broke into song.
Stephenie whispered, “I denounce Satan.”
Then she was falling.
8
Stephenie fell with her hands in the air and the grain sack blocking her vision. She was about to scream when her feet smashed against something very solid. Screams came, nearly loud enough to mask the sound of her ankle snapping––nearly, but not quite. She heard the SNAP, fell onto her side, and shrieked like mad woman. Blood sprayed across both legs, into the air and across the sack before it poured from her ankle and created a pond deep enough for kids to play in. Light danced in front of her eyes, blood rushed to her head and she thought she might faint. Her mouth became drier now than before. The world was spinning, not that she could see it spin. She couldn’t. All she could see was the blurry weave of the barnyard sack, which light penetrated with ease.
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