by K. J. Young
Are they all here? The Redevine Society, Roy, Alma, Neela, Sam, Baird, and Lara—all of them here tonight? But no, Alma is dead, isn’t she?
Mark hears the sounds of the Victrola being taken from the podium cabinet, along with the noise of someone riffling through the pages of a book. From the way the table shakes and the sound of Roy’s old-man creaks and gasps, he can tell Roy has been boosted onto the table and is lying parallel to him. As he listens, the restraints are buckled around each of Roy’s wrists.
“Not too tight,” Roy says.
“I know how to do this,” Monica says, sounding almost insulted.
Mark remembers the illustrations in the book and is sickened by the thought that he’s being used for some kind of human sacrifice. Bile rises up his throat and sits in his mouth.
This can’t be real. It isn’t real. I must be hallucinating, or else I’m losing my mind.
Neela’s sweet voice says, “This is so exciting! We’re so close.” He feels her hand brush his hair away from his forehead. “You picked a real winner this time.”
This time? Mark reels with panic and tries unsuccessfully to move his concrete limbs. He feels like he’s about to cry.
“He walked through the door like I ordered him from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.” Roy chuckles. “Mark Norman. Not a deep thought in his pretty little head, but he is a fine specimen, I’ll agree with you on that point.”
“Can’t hold his liquor.” Monica’s voice again. “But we’ll fix that.”
Such a betrayal. Mark swallows, tasting the acid of his fear. Why are they doing this to me? Roy said I was like a grandson. And Monica? After all we’ve been through together. Why is she helping them?
From past experience, he knows that in the morning he’ll realize that this episode is just a gibberish concoction of his own mind. Dreams don’t have to make sense.
But what terrifies him is that it doesn’t feel like a dream.
Words run through his brain, nagging at him. It’s better to take action than to be a victim. Who said that? He strains to think but can’t remember. Does it even matter? Around him the voices chatter, oblivious to his fear.
He hears Monica say, “Mark’s turn.”
Roy says, “Get those clothes off before you put the restraints on.”
Run! Every instinct he has is shouting the order. Run as fast as you can!
His body resisting, it takes everything he has to open his eyes, but he manages, blinking against the bright light coming from the three chandeliers overhead. He has a blurry view of Monica as she walks toward him. She stops abruptly, shouting out, “He’s awake! His eyes are open!” She sounds frantic. “He sees.”
As the clatter of footsteps come his way, Mark knows it’s now or never.
Adrenaline kicks in and he pushes off the table, willing his legs to hold him. He doesn’t know what’s actually happening, but one thing is becoming clear: they want to kill him.
And he knows something else too: he doesn’t want to die.
“Get him!” Roy calls out in his quivery voice. A glance backward shows Roy stretched out on the table, not a stitch of clothing on him.
“Stop him!” calls another voice.
Mark runs, and now that he’s on his feet he’s propelled by absolute terror. As he approaches the doorway, he remembers that closed doors will keep them trapped in the room, so he pauses to shut them before he sprints down the hall.
His theory is wrong. The doors don’t hold.
They’re coming after him now. He doesn’t look behind him, but judging from the sound, it’s Sam and Baird and they’re gaining on him.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please help.
He’s not praying, exactly. More like begging anyone who might be listening.
But no one’s listening.
He’s halfway down the stairs when he trips and tumbles all the way to the bottom. Head. Ass. Legs. Over and over again, each body part takes a turn slamming against the steps.
Finally, he lands at the bottom with a sickening thud.
Scrambling to his feet, he goes to the front door, turns the lock, and opens it, leaping off the porch and hitting the ground hard, twisting his ankle. He leaps up, ignoring the shooting pain in his ankle, and dashes forward, aware of Baird and Sam right behind him. He screams into the night, “Help me!” and keeps going, running blindly into the street.
When he’s almost across to the other side, he sees a car turn the corner heading right his way. Behind him, Baird and Sam are stepping off the curb, seconds away from grabbing him and dragging him back into the house.
He needs more distance.
Or more time.
Mark makes a quick decision and backtracks into the center of the street, waving his arms. The headlights come closer. Baird and Sam pause, deliberating.
He thinks they wouldn’t dare do anything to him in front of a witness.
The car screeches to a stop, just inches away from Mark. He slams his palm on the hood of the car for emphasis and screams, “Help me! You’ve got to help me.”
The car door opens, and out steps Dr. Cross. “Mark, what’s going on?”
Mark exhales in relief. He gestures to Sam and Baird. “I have to get out of here. They’re trying to kill me.”
Dr. Cross looks from Mark to the two men. “They’re trying to kill you?”
Sam raises both hands in surrender. “We’re trying to help him. Roy called and asked us to come over because Mark was acting crazy.”
Baird adds, “He said Mark was tearing up the whole house. We’ve been trying to calm him down. He’s out of his mind.”
Both the men sound so reasonable that for the smallest moment, Mark wonders if this is true. Is it possible he has been sleepwalking? Someone was just talking about sleepwalking. When was that? His thoughts are so jumbled he can’t remember.
“We were trying to talk some sense into him,” Sam says. “He just bolted out of the house. You saw him.” He points. “He just ran into the street like a maniac.”
No. This is wrong. They weren’t trying to talk sense into him. He’s sure of that. Somewhat sure, anyway. He looks straight at Dr. Cross. “You need to help me. Will you take me away from here?”
“Of course.” A shadow of confusion crosses the doctor’s face. “If that’s what you want. I can wait if you want to go inside and pack up your things.”
“No.” Mark shakes his head. His wallet is still in his back pocket. The only possessions left behind are clothes, and those can be replaced. He’s never going inside Alden Manor again. “I just need to leave. Now.”
Dr. Cross nods and calls out, “Gentlemen, Mark is leaving with me.”
Mark opens the passenger door, gets inside, and locks the door. He sees Baird and Sam’s disappointed faces and thinks about how close he just came to danger. Dr. Cross slides into the driver’s side. “Where to?” he asks.
“If you could drive me to my parents’ house, that would be great,” Mark answers, reciting their address. It’s the one place he can think of that will take him in on short notice at this time of night. His stepfather will give him shit for quitting another job, but too bad for that. He’ll say he’s reconsidered his stepdad’s offer of working for the insurance company. He’ll even give Brian the credit for pulling him back into the fold. All of them will gloat, and he’ll let them. He won’t be living with them for very long, not if he can help it.
He just needs to put Alden Manor behind him.
As Dr. Cross accelerates and the car glides down the block, Mark breathes a sigh of relief.
Chapter Thirty-One
Dr. Cross turns west onto Clarke Street and asks, “What happened?”
Mark shakes his head. “Something strange, I can’t even tell you. I just needed to get out of there.”
“I see.” He gives Mark a quick sympathetic smile. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You look a bit off. If you want, we can stop at the hospital and get yo
u checked out.”
Mark still feels off—in fact, the dizziness is back—but he just shrugs. “All I need is a decent night’s sleep.” The air-conditioning in the car feels good. Now he can breathe again. The car radio is playing Petula Clark’s song “Downtown.” Hearing it makes him realize he hasn’t listened to contemporary music in what seems like ages.
Interrupting his thoughts, the doctor says, “So I take it you’re quitting the job?”
“Yes.” Through bleary eyes he watches as they drive past street after street, each intersection another step away from Alden Manor. As much as he was glad to leave his childhood home before, that’s how much he wants to return to it now. He’s willing to sleep in his old bed again, anything to get this feeling of dread out of his system. When Dr. Cross eases to a stop at the red light on Forty-Eighth and Clarke Street, Mark closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the window.
He’s dozing when he feels the jab in his left arm. For a second, in his confusion, he thinks, Bee sting. But when he looks, it’s Dr. Cross pushing the plunger of a hypodermic needle into his upper arm. Mark pulls away, shouting, “What the hell are you doing?”
Dr. Cross says, “Sorry, Mark. Had to do it.” He drops the needle on the floor by Mark’s feet, then grabs the steering wheel and makes an illegal U-turn, narrowly missing an oncoming truck.
Oh my God! Mark doesn’t know what drug is now moving through his system, but he has his hand on the door release, ready to bolt as soon as the car slows. Dr. Cross turns off the main drag and is now accelerating at top speed down side streets. The residential streets are middle-of-the-night dead, which is fortunate, because he’s ignoring stop signs and driving like a lunatic. “Slow down,” Mark yells, but Dr. Cross doesn’t react at all.
With his hand tightly gripping the door release, Mark weighs whether or not to jump out at this speed. Would he survive the fall? It’s possible, he thinks, but it’s also possible that he’d land too close to the car and get run over by the rear wheels. Not the outcome he wants.
He thinks he can outlast the drug. He’s still wide awake, after all. The car has to slow down or stop at some point—hopefully soon. He glances down the street looking for a police officer. They’re never around when you need them, is the last thought he has before he realizes he can’t move his body at all. His head lolls to one side, and his hand, the one that was on the door, falls next to the seat.
He’s paralyzed.
The car slows to normal speeds, heading back in the direction from which they came. Back to Alden Manor, he realizes with a sickening knot in his stomach.
When the car comes to a stop, Dr. Cross rolls down his window and calls out to someone. “Hurry!” He unlocks the car doors and unbuckles Mark’s seat belt. The passenger door opens, and Baird half drags, half lifts Mark’s limp body. Everything in him wants to fight, but he’s got no bones or muscles anymore. He hears Dr. Cross’s voice: “The paralytic won’t last long. Maybe another five minutes. You have to get him upstairs right away.”
“We’re on it,” Sam says.
Mark watches the night sky move across his field of vision. As they go up the porch steps, Mark sees Doug peer around the corner of the house, shaking his head sadly. He mouths the words, “Tried to tell ya,” then retreats out of sight.
Monica opens the door, saying, “Finally. What took so long?”
They drop him onto the stretcher, which is laid out on the floor in the entryway. Dr. Cross comes in behind them. “Careful!” he says sharply. “We don’t want any damage done.”
“He’s fine,” Sam says. “Nothing but a few bumps and bruises.”
The two men grunt as they make the trip back up the stairs. This time Mark can see everything, and he knows it’s real. What kind of craziness is this? A million ideas run through his head, each one worse than the one before it. Human sacrifice? Sex cult? Organ donation? Cannibalism? Whatever it is, they’ve somehow gotten Monica involved as well.
This is insanity.
When they plop him on the table this time, he rolls to one side, coming face-to-face with Roy, who is still naked and restrained on the table. “Mark, my boy,” he says, his voice jovial. “I’m glad you decided to come back and join the party.”
Dr. Cross says, “Get him buckled in right away before the paralytic wears off.”
Mark gets rolled onto his back, and Lara and Neela work to pull his clothing off and get the restraints secured around his wrists. His sight line includes the dangling prisms on one of the chandeliers, sparkling in the light. Neela leans over him, and he smells her floral perfume. It’s a light, pleasant scent.
He senses the air on his bare flesh and feels like puking.
Lara says, “I don’t like his crazy eyes.” She’s talking about him.
“They’re not crazy eyes,” Dr. Cross says. “He’s afraid.”
“Well, can you fix that?” Lara cinches the final buckle and pulls on it to ensure it’s secure. “Give him something to knock him out? I can’t stand looking at his face. It’s creepy.”
“He and Roy will be getting the same sedative.” A minute later, Dr. Cross’s face looms above Mark’s own. He smiles and dabs Mark’s arm with an alcohol wipe. He feels the jab of the needle, stinging, cold. “Just relax, son. It’ll be over soon. You’re going to be just fine.”
Mark is not convinced. In fact, inwardly he’s screaming. But it doesn’t seem to matter, because the room is receding and he’s now floating away on a cloud, slipping away to somewhere far more pleasant. Dr. Cross reaches over and closes Mark’s eyelids. “Sweet dreams, Mark Norman.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It begins gradually. First, he’s aware that he’s coming out of a deep sleep. The sensation is that of rising up from the bottom of the ocean toward the light. This is accompanied by the realization that he’s alive.
Breathing.
Heart beating.
He’s survived. Thank God.
Voices float faintly toward him from off in the distance. He recognizes them as Dr. Cross and the other members of the Redevine Society, so he guesses that this new reality is a continuation of what he previously experienced. Mark is still not quite clued in, but he’s hopeful he may actually get out of this unscathed.
His fingers press down on the surface he’s lying on, and there’s some give to it, which tells him he’s on a mattress. His wrists are no longer constrained.
With great effort, Mark manages to open his eyes just wide enough to see the ceiling of his bedroom at Alden Manor. His vision is slightly blurry, but he manages to turn his head to one side and sees Dr. Cross, sitting in a chair and reading a book. The doctor closes the book and sets it down on the nightstand. “Oh good, you’re awake.” He calls out, “Nurse Darby, I need you.”
Nurse Darby strides into the room. She’s attired in her nurse garb, and just like before, her white shoes squeak with each step. She and Dr. Cross work together, the doctor checking Mark’s eyes with a small flashlight, while Nurse Darby presses her fingers into his wrists while looking at her watch. After a minute, she says, “Pulse rate, seventy and steady.”
Dr. Cross puts a stethoscope to his chest, while Nurse Darby wraps a blood pressure cuff around his upper arm. They’re concerned about his health and are taking care of him. Mark sees this as a positive sign. He tries to speak, but it comes out in a whisper. “What did you do to me?”
“Just relax. It’s almost over,” Dr. Cross says.
“How much longer?” Nurse Darby asks the doctor.
“Long enough for the sedative to clear out of his system. I think we’re almost there.”
Mark’s body is currently useless, and his thoughts are fuzzy as well. It takes all his mental effort to make sense of this. In his mind he replays everything that has happened to him since the day he arrived at Alden Manor. How Roy and Alma declared he was like family. The new clothes and haircut. How Roy made him executor of his will.
And the words of wisdom imparted by Roy over drinks
.
Life has seasons.
You remind me of myself when I was a young man.
Dress for success, that’s my motto. It’s how young men come to rule the world.
You can spend your whole life wishing you were someone else, or you can just become that person.
Roy was so kind and encouraging. A cross between a grandfather and a mentor. He chose him to inherit his estate, for God’s sake. Had none of it been real?
On the opposite side, there was Doug and his nonsensical warnings.
They’re gonna get you.
People go in that house, they don’t come out the same.
Bad things happen to people who go in there.
Lisa, too, had her qualms about this house. Her crazy, frantic journal entries captured her frame of mind perfectly. He understands how she felt now. He’s never experienced terror like this before. Fear jolts down his spine all the way to the soles of his feet, making it hard to breathe.
He shuffles through the memories over and over again, looking for something that might help explain what’s happening here, but he comes up blank. He’s alive but can’t discount the possibility that they took out one of his organs. A kidney or lung, maybe? Other than that, he can’t even imagine.
After Dr. Cross leaves the room, Nurse Darby takes over his spot in the chair, watching over Mark. Maybe she’ll help him? They were never friends, but she bossed him around plenty, and he always did what she wanted without complaint. That has to count for something.
His mouth feels heavy, but he manages to say, “I don’t understand what’s going on.” He’s speaking as loudly as he can, but it comes out in a rasp. “Help me. Please help me.”
“No talking,” she says sternly, tapping her watch. “Very soon you will understand.”
Mark blinks, trying to get the room to be less fuzzy, without success. It’s as if he’s wearing glasses with lenses coated with Vaseline. Everything is hazy, which gives him a headache. He closes his eyes and finds himself drifting off.