Once, a deluge had sprung up out of nowhere and he had been obliged to take shelter in a small cafe with dozens of other people. As if he were working a jackhammer, Curt had forced his body to shiver and thus within minutes, using only the power of sympathy and without a nickel to his name, he was sitting drinking hot cocoa and eating a large sandwich and doing what he liked best, people watching.
They fascinated him.
The people in that cafe, for the most part, were peppy, even buoyant. The rain had forced them out of the dull routine of their lives and they were happy about it. This made Curt wonder why they didn't break with their routines more often.
Curt had no routine.
Other than waking up, usually while it was still technically morning and begging on Wednesdays, when the need arose, everyday was nearly completely different from the last. His life was one small adventure after another. He gloried in it.
But not everyone in that cafe was feeling so elated at the change in their lives, these people would each eventually duck into the sheets of the cold grey rain, desperate to get back to dull sameness that marked their every moment. These people he pitied, they were ants to him, unable to deviate from their pathetic ruts even when Mother Nature forced the gift of change down their throats.
He missed the rain. Just then, lying in his bed with the covers over his head as the sun came up, he missed the rain. Of course, he missed everything about his old life, but now he missed the rain most of all since it seemed to have magical properties over the house.
His mind ranged over this. What part did the rain play in calming the creature? Or was it only about the house's ability to sense, to hear? With that thought in his mind, he leaned over and felt the wall. He could feel the aliveness of the house, it seemed...normal. At least normal for it, content, but unhappily so. And its awareness seemed no greater than on the evening after Darla had been killed.
This was strange as well. The pressure to be "good" was fueled by a building hunger and really, the word hunger only barely covered the perversity and unwholesome desire and need of the house. That nasty feeling grew in the air all around him, but not in the walls.
Strange.
A minute later Curt got up and went about his now hated morning routine, and as he did he considered the possibility that whatever spirit or ghost haunted the place, might very well have a split personality too.
5
Hi Curt,
I dont remember what i wrote in my last note. Isn't that strange? i need to know something that may sound stranger. It's very importent. Did you hear something from my room last nite? A voice, or someone talking? i woke up with words in my head just as if they were spoken to me. It was a boy's voice and at first i thought they were yours. im freaking out. Please help.
If ever there was a time to get revenge and have Paul punished it was then. A simple: Yes, I heard you talking about your mom, you were crying for her to come back, would very likely send him completely off the deep end. However, the note was written in the handwriting of that of the old Paul, the one that had fought for him, the one that he still couldn't help but like and pity.
Hi Paul,
i didn't hear anything and i think i would have cause this house is so dang quite. Maybe it was that voice in your head only. Try not to worry about it. Worrying will only make things worse. When you read this come see me and we will thum restle. That's always quite and fun too!
Curt.
Paul never showed up to thumb wrestle.
That was a worry. Curt spent that fourth morning sitting next to Amber, despite how much it angered Matt. Starting the day before, she had begun slipping into her trances and now they were progressing for longer and longer periods and as before, she always came out of them in the middle of conversations.
The first one had sent everyone in the family room jumping back, startled. After that, Curt sat near to her, ready to clamp a hand over her mouth at the first sound. Matt was furious about this, wanting Amber to be punished, but Curt paid him no mind except to keep watch more closely for the sneak attacks that were soon in coming. It seemed as long as he kept the older boy in front of him, Curt was relatively safe. Matt was taller by six inches and heavier by forty pounds, but was basically a coward.
On Amber's third outburst, "Why don't...mmmnh..." Matt showed that he would have made a good thief, if it weren't for that yellow streak running down his back. Curt had clamped his hand over Amber's mouth just as before, and at that precise moment, Matt punched him in the face.
Matt, like a good thief, saw the opportunity coming a mile away and knew that Curt, with his hands occupied, would be defenseless. The older boy was quick and accurate as well and if it weren't for the stinging pain that erupted across the bridge of his nose, Curt would have admired the blow.
But as it was, he stumbled away his eyes watering in pain, or so he told himself. Curt was still at that age when he'd sometimes cry when hurt and he didn't want anyone one to know. Embarrassed and angry, he went upstairs to the bathroom and sobbed as quietly as he could and when he was done, he checked for a note from Paul. He knew he should have at least waited until he was feeling better, but his impatience got the better of him and he read the message he found there while still feeling quite low.
Paul's second note was strange; it was as if he didn't realize he had already sent one that morning.
Curt,
Thank you for your kind note. I believe my little issue with that voice is a thing of the past. I haven't heard it for awhile. About you talking in your sleep, Just try to sleep as light as possible. I heard you last night. It wasn't bad, but it will get worse. Did you try the SOS thing yet? I know that you weren't trying to signal me concerning Matt. You want to contact the outside world. That's very smart. No one has tried that yet, to my knowledge. My window faces nothing or I would try it. Give it a shot tonight.
A sigh escaped the young thief and his hands ran their way through the mass of brown curls atop his head. Obviously, the wrong Paul had written the note. There was no way he was going to try the SOS, not with knowing that the house was aware and not after the near disaster with the phone.
The little letter, with its evil intent depressed him worse that he had been, and for a long time he sat there feeling empty of all thoughts and emotions, his state similar to what he went through on the day Darla died. He felt neither alive nor dead during this time. It was as if he was trapped between heartbeats and he wanted to stay trapped. Though he knew that time ticked away around him, this feeling of being nothing and knowing nothing had a soothing quality and he hoped it would last forever.
But sometime later, Amber snapped him out of his state, though she did not mean to.
From the family room, "Where's the yarn, mom? I can't see it..." her voice carried clear as a bell and sweet as cream all the way to Curt, who sat in his trance on the tiled floor of the bathroom.
It was as if a little girl Amber were calling up the stairs to him. Her voice had that adorable innocent tone that all mother's loved, and wished would last forever. It startled Curt back into his body, but his mind had trouble focusing. The words had been so alive, without even the smallest trace of fear, that for a few seconds he wondered if someone had called from outside the house.
Then it clicked into place as to who had spoken and why, he froze waiting and worrying, fearing that he would hear those dreadful footsteps charging up from the basement. The air stirred with hungry anticipation and on a hunch, Curt reached out and felt the tiled wall next to him.
The house seemed to be coming awake, and if he were to describe what he felt, he would've said it was a growing anger and below that an unmistakable evil. He wanted to go to Amber just then to comfort her, but knew that any movement or noise would only make everything worse. Therefore, he sat, feeling the tile and slowly, eventually the house drowsed again. Only then did he did he write a hurried return note to Paul, before going to check on his Amber.
The message was not something he reall
y wanted to do, but he had read a saying once before, "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." At the time, he had thought this to be a stupid thing to do, now however, in that house it seemed a necessity.
Just like trailing closely around after Matt, to keep him supervised, he had to keep Paul as a "friend" and allow the boy to try to undermine him in that sly way of his. If he didn't, Paul would surely become more overt in his attempts to have Curt punished and there was no way he could keep an eye on both the older boys at once.
So for now, he'd have to act worried that he was cracking up around Paul, it wasn't much of an act.
Hi Paul,
You heard me last nite? i thought for sure that it was only a dream. i was thinking about trying to signal with my light, but now I'm too afraid too. i will try to sleep lighter tonite, but i already sleep so little that i don't know what to do. thanks for your help. Can i ask another question? Som of the kids seem much weirder this week than last. like the pressure is worse on them or somthing.
Curt.
With this done, he rushed down stairs to be with Amber.
Her pale blue eyes were large and fearful and she cried great shining silent tears in relief at the sight of him, but otherwise didn't move a muscle. She was too afraid to budge an inch and he had to pull her from the room, and he took her to his.
There they sat together in silence as usual, and in order to pass the time while they waited for the next punishment or for dinner, they played little games. But the stress was still too great for her and during their second thumb war, she escaped into one of her trances.
That's how it went for the remainder of the afternoon of the fourth day of the week. She would startle awake with some word or another on her lips and he'd clamp his hand down over her mouth again fast. Each time she wore a look of increasing fear, as well as gratitude, while he hid a worried one of his own.
She had been very loud that one time she called out to her dead mom concerning the yarn and the other words that she had spoken, though brief seemed to be adding up. Curt fretted that even though it was only the fourth day, she was just on verge of being punished. Yet dinner came and went and then chores, somehow, she was able to hold it together.
That night the creature barely looked into his room, but it stayed so long in hers that Curt felt convinced it would attack at any moment. But eventually it moved on and the punishment was staved off for one more day.
Chapter 14
The Punishment
1
The fifth day after Darla was killed, the house seemed to be a home for lunatics.
And this included Curt.
He went to breakfast that morning wearing his pajamas under his clothes and he made sure they stuck out oddly here and there. As well, he spiked his hair purposely and arranged his face to suggest he hadn't slept a wink. The stress on him was massive, but his facade was all a fake, so Paul would think that his mind games were working.
The other children weren't faking and as usual, the mouse looked the craziest and in truth, it wasn't just a look. It was a fact, a very sad fact. Next on the list was Amber, she went in and out of trances, becoming a living manikin in a second, even while she was eating and sometimes when walking. Paul appeared as if he was having an endless seizure and Matt had become a mute raging drill sergeant.
Every infraction or even supposed infraction was enough to set the boy off and he would frequently make more noise being silently furious than the person who had broken his rule. By the time normal people were sitting down for lunch, Curt thought Matt was for certain going to be punished that night.
But the older boy must have felt it too and went to his room to hide.
Curt could only wish the mouse would do the same thing. And this time it wasn't her crazy eyes that were bothering him, it was her overt sexual nature.
"You'll be next," took on a new meaning when she grabbed his crotch and rubbed her bone-skinny body against his while she whispered it in her dead voice. He pushed her away in complete disgust, wondering how she could possibly be thinking about sex. Or if she were thinking at all.
This was something that he had wondered a great deal about.
Did the mouse have any of her mind left? Other than showing her empty plate to Miss Feanor, she never tried to converse with anyone. And besides being crazy, all that Curt had ever seen her do was that same cat puzzle. She worked on it day after day. She never finished it either, but would only get so far depending on how crazy she was that day and then she'd start all over the next.
On this fifth day, with the pressure running so high, she had done little more than pull the box down and open it up. There it sat looking lonely and ignored as the mouse seemed quite fixated on Curt and time after time, he would push her away, only to see her bounce off the walls and coming zombie walking back at him.
Finally, he took Amber by the hand to his room.
At this point, mentally, the blonde girl was only so much better than the mouse. Her trances were coming on very fast, but unfortunately they wouldn't last long, sometimes only a minute or two and then she would be talking to the air, in a loud conversational manner. Curt was hard pressed to keep her quiet and he was only partially successful. Because of this, an hour or two before dinner, his betting odds on who would be punished next became almost even between Matt, Amber, and the mouse.
His own chance at cracking that day was virtually nil. He had invested so much of himself into protecting Amber that the little things that had been haunting him were overshadowed by this and he barely noticed the oppressive silence, the terrible food or the hungry desire for pain in the air that sat unmoving in the house.
Paul wasn't in the running either and this was mostly due to the fact that he kept to himself most of the time, sitting in his room with his door shut. Curt assumed that the blonde boy would make it another day, but he hadn't taken into consideration the deterioration of Paul's mental state
Just before dinner, the boy had walked boldly into Curt's room, "You think you're so great, don't you?" Paul asked in accusatory tone and Curt scarcely had time to grab Amber's mouth.
"Mknnha," she mumbled as she popped out of her trance at the sound of the boy's voice. She looked about and when she saw Paul, her eyes went wide in alarm. Curt must have worn the same surprised expression.
With both hands, Paul had a hold of the skin around his eyes and was pulling back on it; stretching the skin to the rear of his face. He was trying to control his twitch this way; it looked freakish and made Curt's own skin crawl. Finally, there was someone to match the mouse in the crazy competition, he thought.
"Do you?" Paul asked. "Is that why you think you can tell everyone, who can and can't be punished. We heard you talking to the house. We know what you said about me."
Curt could say nothing to this. Not only because the atmosphere in the room had charged instantly, but also because he hadn't spoken to the house, and denying it to an insane person would have been useless and perhaps dangerous. Paul looked as if violence lay just beneath his skin.
Curt shrugged his shoulders, meekly.
"Fine be that way," Paul growled, but thankfully, he said it quietly, in a vindictive way. "You know what you are? You're a fucker. That's what you are." He turned and went back to his own room.
2
The first real punishment since the one that Curt had slept in a drug-induced coma through occurred that night.
Dinner in the house was normally a somber affair, but that evening it seemed deader than usual. Other than the mouse, every one ate with a minimum of movement and barely made eye contact with each other. Curt saw that each of the children thought they were going to be punished that night.
Again, except the mouse. She didn't seem capable of thinking to such an extent.
There was only one upside to this. Matt and Paul blazed through there chores and then each went to hide in their rooms, hoping to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. The downside was the two girls.
> During his chores, the mouse kept appearing out of nowhere, whispering that he would be next and attempting to grab him, while Amber seized up with such frequency that by the time Curt finished brushing his teeth, she had yet to start cleaning the hallway.
A minute later, he found himself sweating through his pajamas, working in a near panic to get her chores done. At one point, he even dragged her stiff and useless body to the end of the hall just to get her out of the way. And he still wasn't done, when Miss Feanor began turning off the downstairs lights.
He had to fight a great temptation to leave her there and run to his room.
Instead, he tried to work faster, but seconds later, he saw Miss Feanor glaring at him as she walked slowly up the stairs. He bent to the chore harder but sloppier, and surprisingly the lady began helping, going on her hands and knees to get the work finished. He never noticed before how much tougher Amber's chores were compared to his, and hers were nothing compared to Matt's, who had a million little trinkets to dust, twenty pictures to clean, and many yards of floor to sweep and wax and buff.
At some point, Amber was back next to him crying and scrubbing at the same time. But a minute later, she had frozen up again, a single tear hanging from her pert little nose.
'Go put her in bed,' Miss Feanor motioned with uncharacteristic charity. 'I will finish up here.'
Curt had a small lithe, sleekly muscled body and like most active twelve year olds, he didn't carry an ounce of fat on him. But compared to Amber, he was hippopotamus. She felt like little more than bundled twigs in his arms and when her head lolled backward, he could see the cartilage of her larynx and the rings of her trachea clearly beneath the skin of her neck.
How long could a person survive off a diet of oatmeal, spam, carrots and rice and expect to live, he wondered. The very sad answer came to him quickly, a ten year old like Amber had been, could probably make it to her eighteenth birthday and no more. All that was needed. He sighed as a heavy depression weighed him down more than the girl.
The Punished Page 19