The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  And nothing would as long as Darla's shrieks continued.

  At first, her misery struck him so keenly that he cried beneath his covers, sobbing in empathetic fear for her. But her screams went on for so long that ultimately, his tears dried up and he could only clamp his hands over his ears and hope that they would end before he went mad.

  They did end eventually and then his fear was no longer empathetic, but personal, selfish and he became afraid only for himself.

  Crreik.

  He should've expected this. The creature crept up the stairs quietly and as it did, he began to shake beneath his covers. By the long fifth step, he was nearly in a panic, because his muscles wouldn't stop shimmying about. In desperation, he curled into a ball and grabbed his knees with all of his remaining strength. This helped, but oddly seemed to forced the shaking into his chest, where it felt as though his heart were about to explode.

  Suddenly he remembered the note he had left in his pocket and his horror-stricken mind recalled every incriminating detail of it. He was sure just having it on his person was likely cause for a punishment and after what he had seen and heard, he knew he'd do anything to keep that from happening to himself. Grabbing the note, he stuffed it quickly into his mouth and only barely began to chew when the creature entered his room.

  Saliva flooded around the note, but he refused to swallow just in case it would make noise. The creature moved about his bed, slowly as always, so that soon Curt was drooling like a baby. He didn't care. Somehow, enough light came through his window that the thing was able to cast a feeble shadow through his blankets. It turned him cold knowing the creature was only inches from him.

  But then it moved away.

  As the thing went about the house on its usual rounds, he slowly swallowed his forbidden note and the pool of saliva. Curt lay there sweating freely, petrified by fear, and he stayed this way long after the last sly sound of the thing had disappeared. Eventually, his brain became disconnected and he didn't think, or question or remember, but instead slipped into a waking trance. And judging by how dry the pool of blood would later feel, he laid there for hours.

  2

  What brought him around was a sharp jab of fingers through the blanket, directly into his cheek. His mind switched back on and his brain started thinking exactly where he had left off and he sucked his breath in sharply with fright. A second later, the fingers jabbed him again, harder. He waited hoping to be left alone, but then suddenly his covers were ripped off of him and he saw Matt standing there. The boy wore unreadable expression. It was certainly not a happy one, nor was it the usual sneering superiority.

  With a quick hand gesture, he motioned for Curt to follow him. They went down stairs and immediately he could see the body of Darla. It lay contorted and crushed looking, sprawled in a hellishly unnatural position by the front door, surrounded by an undisturbed pool of dried blood.

  Before he saw the body, Curt had wished in his heart that Darla would be alive and hoped that she would only have the terrible bruises and sharp pains as he did on his first morning, but she was very much dead. Very, very dead. He had seen dead bodies before, four of them, nothing could compare to this.

  The creature's large teeth had shredded her clothing and had bitten through her skin in hundreds of places and even where the skin hadn't been ripped open, he could see that the bones beneath had been broken. In many spots, splinters of bone erupted up out of her flesh and these appeared sharp and bloody. It looked as though she had fallen into a trash compactor on the back of a garbage truck or into some piece of heavy machinery. He grew light headed and felt sick at the sight.

  He wasn't the only one. Miss Feanor had a green complexion under an expression of worry and Matt, who had followed him down, couldn't stop staring at the body and swallowed loudly repeatedly as he did. Only Paul, the only other person there, didn't seem like he was going to vomit. He had other problems. His twitch had returned with a vengeance and no part of his face wasn't effected. He was as difficult to look upon as the body. But they weren't there to look.

  Miss Feanor laid out a heavy blanket and directed Curt and Matt to put the body of Darla Heines onto it. Curt was terribly afraid to touch it, but Paul, who was practically blind from his twitch was clearly useless and so the youngest boy there went to the women's feet. Along with Matt, he made to pick her up, but her legs bent inward, that is to say the wrong way and feeling the strength in his arms disappear at the sight, he had to drop her.

  "Oh God," he mumbled and knew there was no stopping the vomit shooting up his throat.

  Turning toward the staircase, he heaved and retched loudly, but since breakfast had been hours before, only a nasty watery spew came up. The others waited for him in the dead silence, looking greener if that were possible. Finally, shaking and sweating as if he were in a fever, he bent to his horrid task and with a face twisted and ugly, he helped Matt move the body onto the blanket. They moved her to the garage then, and that was much easier since they could hold the blanket instead of her. Darla was small, like a child herself. And lighter than he expected. Her body went into the trunk of Miss Feanor's car, which was very tiny, but since she was so horribly bendable, she fit with ease.

  Matt shut the trunk with a dull thump and just then, Curt's knees gave out and he fell heavily to the cement floor of the garage. He couldn't get up. There was no strength left in his mind or body and his head swam making the room spin and his stomach waver. Matt didn't help him, yet he didn't hurt him either, he simply turned his face, dead white and shining with sweat, to the door and left.

  With a slack jaw and vacant eyes, Curt watched him walk through the mudroom and then the older boy was gone and he was all alone. The horror of the day had left him dazed and apathetic. He gazed around and saw the garage just as it looked the other two times he had been there. Save for a car, it sat empty. No tools, no bikes, no boxes, no nothing. Nothing but the cold. The cement beneath him was like ice, yet his body was numb and had been since he had watched Darla's knees bend backwards, and therefore he only felt the cold cement vaguely.

  Now he turned his lifeless gaze back to the door and looked into the mudroom and only then did he see what sat catty-corner to the garage door. It was the door that lead into the black pit of the basement, that lead to the creature, the thing. He felt the cold then. It raced up through the hard floor shooting up the sweat of his back.

  He was trapped.

  If the creature came then he would have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. In the space of time it took for his heart to boom once mightily in his chest, he was up off the floor and flying out of the garage and he didn't check his speed until he was all the way down the long hall, standing with the others breathing noisily and staring back at the mudroom door. The creature didn't come up from where it lurked in the basement.

  A few minutes later, Miss Feanor left, presumably to dispose of the body of Darla the Caseworker; however, before she did, she ordered them to clean up the blood and of course his vomit.

  Compared to handling the mangled body this was simple; nothing in his life would be difficult after that. They were done quickly, Matt going on his hands and knees to inspect. When they were finished, and despite not having had dinner, Matt ordered all of them, the girls included to start on their chores. This was fine with Curt because he needed something to do, something physical, something to keep him occupied so he wouldn't think about how easily they rolled Darla's broken body up to get her into the trunk, and besides, he didn't imagine he would be able to eat anytime soon.

  It seemed very strange and highly inappropriate to Curt, but as the other four children went about their chores, they all acted in the most relieved and relaxed fashion. They cleaned and polished and dusted with smiles on their faces and in the case of Amber, occasionally hummed. On the other hand Curt, felt mired in a stagnant pool of depression.

  He saw himself at least partially to blame for the death of Ms Heines. It had been her interest in him, which seemed to have bee
n the final straw. If he hadn't hung around, she might still be alive. Not only that, he now found himself living in a house that had some terrible ghoulish fiend in the basement. The others might have been living like this for years, but he was too new to the situation for him to think past it and the vision of the thing haunted him as he worked.

  The only thing that could be considered in the least way good about their situation was that even Matt seemed to be enjoying the lightened atmosphere and Curt felt he could at least relax on that front. Though he was sure Matt would be back to being a jerk in a day or two, it helped his depression not to worry about his interfering mischief. Amber helped as well.

  At one point, while Curt was cleaning the main hallway, she skipped quietly by expecting to see a smile on his face, but when all she got was a frown, she stopped.

  'What's wrong?' she gestured. Curt couldn't believe how insensitive she was being.

  'Bite, bite. Death. Monster.' This was all he could communicate to her with his hands, but it seemed to be enough.

  Looking close into his eyes, she gave him a little sad shrug that told him, 'This is the way it is.' She then pointed at him with one hand and shook her head, while pantomiming biting with her other hand, 'At least it wasn't you that was killed.'

  Bitterly, he wanted to ask her if she would act this way after his next punishment, but the concept was far too complex for his ability to communicate with his hands and all he could do was sigh tiredly. Hearing it, she reached out and formed his face into a smile, matching it with one of her own.

  When she let go, his face drooped and she repeated the process, being so cute about it, he had to smile for real. The blonde then kissed him sweetly on the lips and left.

  With her departure, he immediately became depressed again, yet it was less than it had been and it allowed him to think a little clearer. Unfortunately his very first thought was, 'I wonder where Miss Feanor is dumping the body?' He groaned aloud at his own morbid thinking and sagged against the wall.

  Looking up he noticed that he was just outside Miss Feanor's bedroom and the door stood partially open.

  He couldn't resist.

  3

  Answers could be in there, secrets...something that would help understand what was going on, not to mention the key to their salvation was most certainly in that room.

  After a very quick glance in both directions, he crossed to the door, measured the opening at four fingers of his right hand and slipped in. He closed the door nearly completely behind him.

  Curt had peeked into every one of the bedrooms on the upstairs, but had never done more than glance at Miss Feanor's room. Like the rest of the house, it was decorated in a girlish manner, or so he thought at first, after a closer look, he reconsidered and a vague notion of 'Grand Ma' came into his mind.

  Though he had never known a single relative other than his mother, he had been in enough homes to associate the decorations in the room as those belonging to an elderly woman. Far more elderly than Miss Feanor. Even the pictures appeared decades old and though he looked, he did not see a young Miss Feanor in any of them.

  There was another thing about the room that seemed out of place and that was the smell. The room gleamed as if it were regularly cleaned like the rest of the house, but it smelled musty and unused. And rifling through her dresser drawers, something that was quite literally beyond his ability to control, he discovered the source of the smell.

  All the clothes were clean, but clearly hadn't been worn or washed in years. Moreover, none of the outfits looked like anything Miss Feanor had yet worn or would wear for that matter and on a hunch, he went to the bed and discovered this too had an unused smell. His gut told him that this wasn't her room at all, as he had assumed.

  Curt, even though he was just shy of thirteen years of age, was an efficient thief and he had zipped through the drawers and looked about very thoroughly in only a matter of minutes. He then went for what he had truly come into the room for, the telephone.

  Ever since he had heard the muted mumblings of Miss Feanor's conversation through the wall of the family room, the phone had been in the back of his mind, and ghost or no ghost he was going to use it. He had seen it in the first second that he walked into the room, but it had always been his style not to rush things, especially when he felt he had time. His instincts told him he had at least another few minutes, or even longer before Miss Feanor came back, but in truth, she wasn't the real issue.

  The true reason for his hesitation had been the feel of the doorframe just before Darla had been attacked. The house had felt alive. And not as a plant or a turtle were alive, but as something intelligent and aware and very evil.

  In the hour or so, since he had moved the dead body, Curt had frequently put out his hand and had gingerly felt the walls. Now that he knew what he was feeling for, the aliveness of the house was readily apparent, though it was far more subdued...or perhaps sleepy. But just then, in that room it was as if the house had cracked an eye at him. His nerves had jangled with alarm as he had gone through the dresser, but it seemed as if the house, at the moment had been satiated and again Curt's intuition told him to proceed. However, he knew the phone would be a different story all together. It was a link to the outside world and he felt it in his bones that this wouldn't be permitted.

  Still, like all thieves, Curt was a gambler. His chosen profession was all about taking risks and he weighed the pros and cons and decided if ever there would be a time to attempt the phone, it would be at that moment. Miss Feanor was out, the ghost had just killed, and the house drowsed around him.

  Now was the time. Still he didn't rush.

  Putting out his hand, he laid it on the phone and simply rested it there for a moment, feeling it as if taking the pulse of the house. There seemed to be only the slightest uptick of awareness, but not enough to turn back. With a deep breath, he pulled the phone up to dial, but paused in confusion, the handset didn't have the keypad on it as he had expected. His eyes dropped to the clunky base of the older model phone, he saw it had a strange circular style dialing unit.

  A moment slipped away as he stared at the antique, he had seen a rotary dialer before, but had never used one. Feeling a touch of panic at this insignificant delay, he shoved the phone to his ear and heard the soft reassuring hum of the dial tone. Holding it there with his shoulder, he went to dial with the strange circle and for a moment couldn't figure out how to use the thing. Pushing the numbers did nothing and only after a few precious seconds went by as he fumbled with the moving circle on the face of it, did he see how it worked. Each number had to be pulled around clockwise and then released; slow but simple.

  He drew the 'nine' all the way around and watched in agony as it slowly rattled back to its starting point. Then he pulled the much closer 'one' around in a short arc, and repeated it a second time. Anxiety filled moments went by as the phone clicked and ticked in his ear, but finally it rang. The phone rang once and then went dead in his hand.

  The house suddenly seemed very much aware of him and he realized at that point, that he had gambled and lost.

  4

  In complete dread, he put the phone back in its cradle, and slipped quietly out of the room as his heart beat gigantically in his thin chest. He slid with all the quiet he could muster down the hall, toward the stairs. Although, he didn't want to look back toward the mudroom, he couldn't help it and when he saw the knob turning on the door, just as it had earlier that afternoon, his world went grey and static filled his ears. Vaguely, he thought about running, but it seemed so useless, his knees were shaking as well and his muscles trembled, all he could do was stand there and wait for his punishment. But unbelievably it wasn't the creature. Like a miracle, Miss Feanor walked into the kitchen just then from the mudroom and in her hands, she carried white bags and he could see the McDonalds logo imprinted on them even from that distance.

  Curt blinked and shook his head not believing his eyes and he honestly thought that for just a moment, he was drea
ming. Nervously he touched the wall next to him, and discerned that the house's awareness was diminishing and for the second time that day, his legs gave out from beneath him and he plunked heavily onto the second step of the main stairs. It seemed that there was nothing to him, and he only sat there staring at the floor that earlier had been filled with blood. His mind tried, but failed at forming thoughts and sometime later, minutes probably, Paul appeared as if by magic and touched his shoulder. Curt didn't jump, he only looked up, his mind still awash, not in relief as one might expect, but in nothingness. Paul, giving him a huge grin, pulled him to a standing position, and the two of them slid down the hall and as they went, Curt's became aware of the wonderful smell of McDonald's French fries.

  This simple thing had him suddenly ravenous and his hunger was like a reminder that he was still alive.

  The atmosphere in the kitchen bordered on Christmas morning, something Amber had told him not to expect much from. There was tons of food, too much food in fact and Curt ate his fill for the first time in a week and as he did, the cheery mood of the others awakened him. Everyone but Miss Feanor seemed in the gayest of moods. She looked horrible and appeared to have aged another ten years, but no one seemed to pay her any mind. Eventually however she waved for them to finish and moments later, they moved as silent ghosts to their bedrooms.

  Full, but not sleepy, Curt knew there was a chance he would be punished that night, still he also knew that he wouldn't die as Darla had, and it was a nasty shock that he realized that this wasn't a good thing. His gut told him the house wanted the children alive so that they could be punished over and over again and the conception of endless punishments, endless torture, seemed far worse than one death, no matter how horrible.