The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  Placing her in bed, she came back to her terrible reality with a start.

  "I, mnhh," she said beneath his quick hand, she struggled for half a second before going limp. He kissed her goodnight, rather as a father should have and after turning off the lights, he asked her a question with his hands.

  'Is this good? Or more?' He wanted to know at what width the door should be shut.

  'A little more,' she informed him, her fingers an inch apart. He did as she directed and then she smiled and buried herself, burrowing beneath her covers like an animal rather than a person.

  3

  Miss Feanor stood across the hall at the door that led to the attic. Her room and all her belongings lay beyond that door and up some stairs. The thought of them and all their possibilities caused him to pause a moment, but she pointed to his room and then to her wrist.

  'Go get in bed and hurry,' the moves indicated.

  Turning away, he did as he was told, still that didn't stop his great curiosity about what lay beyond that door. Very likely it held the answers to why he was there and more importantly how to get out.

  He sensed her watching him and he kept his head carefully neutral and forward. Even when he entered his room, he didn't look back, but when he got into bed, he made sure to be in a position to look through the crack of his door.

  Unfortunately, all he saw was the door to the attic slowly coming to a silent close.

  Crreik.

  The sound of the thing moving up the stairs had occurred within seconds of Miss Feanor having shut her door and Curt still had his covers down under his arms. In a flash, he had them over his head. Because of the very evil nature of the creature, he was afraid, but logically he didn't see himself as a likely candidate for punishment. For that reason, his body didn't vibrate in fear as it normally did as he hunkered down.

  The creature barely looked into his room. It paused outside of it, as if this was day one instead of day five, and then it moved on to Amber's. There, not only did it go into her room, it moved about loudly, knocking into things, shutting her drawers with heavy thumps. He hadn't been afraid before, but now Curt felt a pain in his chest with his great fear, if Amber was to come out from one of her trances just then, she would be attacked for certain.

  But it eventually moved on, going to each of the other rooms and lingering as it had with Ambers. Amazingly, after four or five minutes, the time it took to go through the other rooms, there were no screams as Curt had expected. He felt weird all of a sudden. He actually had anticipated the coming punishment, not as a pleasurable thing, only as something he could count on.

  All the children, except him, had made a great deal of noise and there was no way a punishment should've been avoided. He was beginning to think he had been working far too hard at being quiet, he had practically driven himself crazy trying to keep...

  Suddenly, there came a small creeping noise in the hallway, and this focused his razor sharp mind. That was no child, nor Miss Feanor...

  A scream rent the air.

  "Noooooooooo!" The word was so unreal in its terror that Curt didn't recognize who it was tearing out their own throat in order to make it.

  "Stop! Please, nooooo!"

  He rolled over swiftly orienting on the sound and guessed it was Paul screaming. His screams went straight to Curt's gut and he felt he was about to hurl up his hated dinner. He clutched himself; first his stomach and then his ears. Paul's screams rang out with amazing clarity in the otherwise silent house and no matter how hard Curt thrust his hands to his ears, the noise snuck through. They went on and on, and after a minute, he found himself sobbing and he suddenly realized, that he had actually been saying something.

  In horror, he now abandoned his ears and struck his hands over his mouth. He had been mimicking the sounds as they came to him, Paul's no's were his no's, Paul's pleading whiny voice had been his whiny voice.

  Curt wanted the torture to end as much as Paul did and he began to picture the creature with its huge teeth, and the urge to vomit came again, stronger. He also felt that he couldn't breathe and with fear in his heart, he pulled his covers back and gasped for breath.

  Now that he was out of the covers, the screams were more vivid and carried a weight to them. They struck his exposed skin and seemed to leave a residue on him. In anguish, he moaned miserably and rubbed at himself for just a second or two, before ducking back under the covers.

  He realized he'd rather suffocate than be outside his blankets.

  The air beneath quickly became hot and stale and within a minute, it made him listless and he felt himself slipping into his fugue state where time would blessedly pass him by. But the thief in him had felt something out of place and pulled himself back from that blissful nothingness.

  Thinking past the hateful sounds, he became conscious of the fact that when he had been out of the covers, he had not felt the atmosphere of the room as he thought he would. His curiosity, as it sometimes did, overcame his sense of prudence and while the screams of Paul raged on, Curt forced himself, with a mental toughness well beyond his years, to reach his arm out of the covers and feel the wall next to his bed.

  His breath came in sharply. He barely felt the evil hating force that made the house seem so alive. It was there, but distant and he wondered if it was so caught up in the punishment of Paul that it might not notice a small boy such as himself heading down the stairs.

  With that thought came a weak urge to make a break for the front door, but the ongoing screams and his own common sense quelled it easily. Now was not the time, he mused. He knew too little of the truth of his situation and the creature scared him too much, to take that sort of risk on a wild fancy.

  He was a gambler, just not a reckless one.

  4

  Soon after this the screams ended, and then came a long miserable soulless blubbering, punctuated by periodic shrieks. He could picture the creature still in the room hovering over Paul, nibbling on him as if full, but unable to resist the treat.

  Eventually this ended as well and Curt heard the soft sounds of the creature moving away, down the stairs. After it did, there came a lingering shameful weeping from Paul's room that had Curt embarrassed for his friend. He didn't know what to do, was he suppose to go to him? Should he stay in bed? As far as he knew, no one got up to check on Paul and Curt understood so little about first aide that he would've been the last person Paul would want near him. This last was just a flimsy excuse he used to cover his fear and in the end, Curt did nothing. At length, the crying and the soft moaning ended and he drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  The next morning Curt laid in bed awake well before the sun's light snuck past the slats of his shutters. He stared at the ceiling, watching as it slowly transformed from a dull grey to a bright white, remembering each of Paul's screams. They replayed themselves in his mind. One by one.

  He wanted to cry or scream them away, yet all he could do was swallow them and push them down into his soul, where he knew they would rot and fester. Eventually he knew those fermenting screams would poison him, killing him from the inside out, but first, they would change him into someone new. Someone unrecognizable, someone insane. There was no getting around it. He saw it happening to the people of the house and it would happen to him as well.

  Curt once had a sweet face. Unlined with worry and clear of eye, now however it was set with grim lines. He got up for breakfast...oatmeal again. And again, and again. Always oatmeal. They had to wait on Paul who took forever coming down to eat. Matt rolled his eyes as the blonde boy came limping in and Curt felt his hatred for Matt double.

  Paul looked awful. The poor boy seemed like the walking dead. His face was stark white and he moved about unsteadily. Fresh bruises and bite marks could be seen just at the edges of his long sleeve shirt and Curt knew that beneath the shirt, there'd be a laundry list of more. The boy's skin would be like wallpaper depicting his torture. Curt swallowed the image along with his hated oatmeal and both went to join the screams tha
t were churning in his stomach.

  Worse than the bruising were the boy's eyes. They were haunted like Curt had never seen. Not in any of the street crazies that he had known or the strung out prostitutes pushing their scuzzy wares. No, nothing compared. They had seen something unspeakable and it showed in the way he looked at the world around him as if it were part of a dream; that after last night, nothing could be real. Every object that he came in contact with, he touched consciously; his bowl, his plastic spoon, even the table he'd grip, or run his hands over and his head would give a little nod as if he had just convinced himself that these were real.

  At one point in the tasteless meal, Paul looked up at him and Curt had to look away in embarrassment. He felt tremendous overwhelming guilt, which was stupid. None of what happened to Paul had been his fault, but still the feeling was there.

  Part of it was his memory of Paul calling him a 'Fucker'.

  It was such a childlike and childish thing to say. Only grade schoolers, just learning about cussing for real would say something like that. This made him realize that Paul had been ten years old when he came into the home and in some ways, the boy was still ten. The crying for instance. It had been that of a small child, not a teenager and as it had gone on, he had pictured a much younger Paul lying in bed.

  But he knew there was another, greater reason for his guilt, simply, Paul had been his friend. In his life, he'd had so few friends, still he knew how to treat them, and he felt that he had somehow profoundly let down the boy.

  He didn't know what he could have done differently, but there had to have been something and as he sat there, he vowed to figure out a way to deal with Paul's 'voice.'

  After the meal and before anyone got up to leave, Miss Feanor gave them each a red pill.

  'Vit-a-min,' she mouthed the word at his questioning look.

  'Ok,' his return smile said, however it was anything but ok. Taking pills from her scared him and the red pill went into his cheek and eventually it sank beneath the waters of the toilette. The others took theirs easily enough and Paul received two more large white ones, which he eagerly swallowed.

  As usual, after breakfast, the long dull day was theirs. Curt moved listlessly through his monotonous morning routine and then wandered into the family room and noticed the familiar first day gaiety was back. He sensed the relief at being passed over for punishment as much as any of them, but the way they acted seemed so tactless. Just as quickly as he had entered, he left again hating how everyone pretended to ignore the fact that Paul had just gone through a terrible experience.

  Amber skipped quietly after him, but he ignored her, however she proved difficult to ignore.

  'What's wrong?' her shrug and questioning look asked.

  'Everything,' his hands waved about, indicating the house and all that it contained.

  She commiserated and motioned with her patented shrug, 'This is the way it is.' She seemed to be right, but he still didn't like it. Thinking he wanted to be left alone he gave her a little smile and gently pushed her away, pointing at himself and then at his room, she understood and he went to his bedroom by himself. For a while, he pondered on the house and the creature and about Miss Feanor, and the puzzle she represented. And he thought about the screams.

  Paul's screams and Darla's.

  With those beginning to replay themselves, he decided he didn't want to be alone after all and Amber was there outside his door as if she knew he wouldn't be long. She smiled at him as sweet as a child. When he didn't return her smile, she made it impossible not to.

  Pushing her very white face into his, she poked her nose at his lips, until his own pulled back and his white teeth shown from behind them. She then yanked him around, directing him to the family room where he could enjoy the company of the other children, while they were still halfway enjoyable. Even on their best behavior, Matt and the mouse were hard to take. Paul came in a little later and Curt had trouble looking him in the eye, but the older boy was persistent.

  'There is a message upstairs for you,' he communicated this to Curt with a very small movement of his eyes upwards, towards the bathroom. Curt didn't want a note just then. He felt sure that it would be heavy on blame, but it wasn't.

  Hi Curt,

  im so sorry for the way i acted. You have every rite to hate me and i desserved completely what happened to me last night. The last couple of days, it was like i was posessed. It has never been this bad and it scared me. i see that you and Amber are an item, be careful about this. She will become more and more needy and will want to spend too much time in her weird trances knowing you will bale her out. I don't remeber any questions you mite have asked, so please ask again.

  After he read the note, he couldn't remember what questions he had asked either. Since anything the older boy had written was suspect at best, the last few days, he had been concentrating on misleading Paul, rather than getting information from him.

  He did have a thousand questions concerning the creature and what happened last night, however these were questions he'd never ask. If Paul were to volunteer information, well that would be ok, but otherwise, it seemed too personal and too painful a subject to bring up. It would be just too intrusive.

  Curt pondered the question of questions for a while. So many of his questions had been answered by Paul with, I don't know, that he was little hesitant about bothering with any more. He had already asked about the attic, Miss Feanor, the house, and the creature; all that seemed to be left was asking about the basement. And even considering asking about that, gave Curt a lasting case of the goose bumps.

  But he pushed past the goose bumps.

  Hi Paul,

  The house can make us be a little crazy and you are forgiven. i just wish i had been able to help you better. Maybe if it starts happening again, you can give me a more direct signal. Maybe tap the top of your head. What's in the basement, did Beth ever tell you? Is there a door to the outside down there? Are there windows? Miss Feenor can run away but doesn't. She helps the creeture, but helps us to. Why? Have you been in the atic? Does she ever leave her keys around? Why was everyone weirder this last week than the week before?

  Your friend,

  Curt.

  Feeling depressed again, he sighed heavily when he left the note, wondering how long he would consider Paul his friend, or Amber his girl friend for that matter. People changed under average circumstances, Matt had in probability just been a normal kid when he first came to the house and now he was a psychotic monster. The mouse as well had started off as just a girl named Beth.

  How long before Paul's voice became a permanent part of him, or how long before Amber slipped into a trance and stayed there for good? Curt went to his room, considering what would happen if these two things came to pass, and it was just then that his day became more interesting.

  The police knocked on their front door.

  Chapter 15

  Love Letters

  1

  Curt had just entered his room, when the hall light behind him flashed on and off twice. In a house where uniformity and consistency ruled, this little thing, the lights blinking was equivalent to an earthquake. It caused as much fear as one as well. Poking his head out of his bedroom door, he was just in time to see Miss Feanor streak down the main floor hallway, gliding effortlessly and as silently as an ice skater. She peered through the little peephole for a fraction of a second and when she pulled her eye away, her face had gone grey.

  'Get down here, now!' She motioned to Curt. The others hadn't needed prompting and were gathered around her before he had got halfway down, even Paul, who could only limp along slowly, beat him there. As he came up to them, the lights blinked again, just as before.

  "It's the police," she said in her dry quiet voice. "They've already called about Ms Heines once. I told them she never showed for our meeting. If...

  Donk, donk, donk...

  The police were knocking on the front door. Curt should've been feeling elated, but instead a sick d
read had crawled into his belly.

  "...If they ask any of you, she never showed up. You've never seen her. Matt..." Miss Feanor looked at Curt oddly with her tongue out and then jerked her head upwards.

  Curt's face showed confusion at this, but before he could say or do anything, Matt spun him around and began pulling him up the stairs, which crreiked alarmingly. The other children scattered like roaches. Matt had him by the collar of his long sleeve shirt, and in seconds brought him into his room and shutting the door, he moved in close to Curt.

  "You are sick, vomiting, have a sore throat," Matt whispered into his ear. "You've never seen the caseworker, if they ask. Got it?"

  Curt nodded. The air in the house had already begun to feel angry, but he couldn't stop a sliver of hope from coming out, "Maybe the police might..." Matt shut him up with a terrific glare.

  "Don't be stupid. Bullets won't effect the monster," Matt hissed with rising anger and fear in his voice. He then bodily pushed Curt into bed. The younger boy ducked down and started to cover his head, but Matt yanked the covers down and tucked them beneath his chin. It felt strange, even foreign to lie like that, like a normal person.

  When Matt left, Curt began imagining all sorts of scenarios playing out, and found he couldn't just lay in the bed waiting. Cautious as always, Curt extended his hand to feel the wall, the house was definitely aware and awake, but as expected, it wasn't focused on him. Warily, he pulled himself up and around and put down one of his white socked feet, just at that moment, there came a change in the air in the house and Curt recognized the feel; the front door had opened. Now the house seemed really to come alive and with his heart in his throat, he ducked back down like a frightened squirrel, this time burying himself beneath the covers.