The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  "Hmm? What? Oh, the mouse...I was doing my chores early yesterday, so I would have time to deal with Paul after dinner. I don't know if she came in here or not."

  "Oh," she didn't look exactly like she believed him.

  "Why would I want the mouse when I have someone as beautiful and as sane as you," he said and kissed her on the nose.

  "Then what was she doing in here?" Amber asked, propping herself up on one elbow, "And don't call her mouse. Her name is Beth. She's a person."

  "Sure, her name is Beth, but I don't know why she was in here." Curt smiled falsely at her.

  Amber settled down again and relaxed in his arms and the more she relaxed, the more she talked. This was fine with Curt, he loved her voice, regardless if he actually listened to the words she was saying.

  He wasn't.

  Instead, he pondered upon the girl he still thought of as the mouse, wondering if she had more going on upstairs that he had at first believed. He wondered and she talked for a long time, but eventually, the heavens gave all that it could and the rains petered out. Amber's voice gradually sunk as low as it could go and with a final kiss, she left as quietly as the rains had.

  Curt immediately hopped up and fished under his dresser. The papers and the all-important paperclips were gone.

  Figuring that the mouse had taken them back to her room, he forced himself to be calm; a very difficult thing and went about the rest of the late afternoon and evening as he normally would, knowing that he'd get them back eventually. The next day was a different story altogether and a light panic fluttered about inside him, making him feel queasy. He had searched the girl's room top to bottom, the papers were nowhere to be found.

  Chapter 17

  Obsession

  1

  That fourth week in the home, Curt dwelled obsessively on two overriding matters.

  Now, he had not actually been there for four weeks, but with the dreary consistencies of the days, each as dull and repetitious as the last, he had already lost track of them. He could only keep the punishments clear in his mind. His had been the first, and a few days followed that and then Darla had been killed. The beginning of the third week had commenced with Paul's first punishment and now with Paul's second, they were on to their fourth week according to his distorted reckoning.

  The first obsession that he had to confront was an amazing hunger that nagged at him endlessly during that long week. It caused him to think about food constantly and he especially craved anything salty. His mind strayed to his past life where he would eat potato chips by the bag-full, sitting behind the Seven-Eleven. And he dreamed of the huge pretzels at the ballpark, watching the Pirates play. Or popcorn with extra butter at the movies-'Hey kid where's your ticket? Sorry, but my dad's got them, he didn't want me to carry it around cuz he said I would lose em'. Do you want me to go get it?'

  He found himself daydreaming of everything he would eat, once he got out of Miss Feanor's home; the list was very long. Curt had been hungry on many occasions, he was a boy after all, but since leaving his mother it had become a rarity.

  Save for a few ancient cans of soup and some inedible dust-bunnies, his mother's cupboards were always barren. In her miserable world, food wasn't a priority; her only concern had been when and where she would get her next fix, and it was out of hunger, that tiny four-year old Curt had begun his life as a thief.

  On the streets, food was far more plentiful than the average person realized; one just had to know where to look for it. Not that Curt would ever dig through the trash for food, not anymore at least. The last time he had done that, he had still been living with his mother and hadn't yet fully grasped certain concepts. The chief of these was that if opportunity didn't present itself, one would have to create the circumstances to allow it to.

  But even with his growing skills as a thief, sometimes things got tight and there had been a few times when he had gone a couple of days without eating. Thankfully, the super market seemed always to carry plenty of food.

  His favorite trick was to grab a cart and follow around after a lady pushing a full one, he would make sure to engage her in conversation, asking in the most polite manner about different products. To all appearances, they were mother and son. He would add things to his cart, generally large household items, paper towels and the like, but also snacks. These he'd munch away at, as if he had a perfect right to and no one ever said a thing concerning it, believing that "mom" would be paying for the items at the counter.

  But if that didn't work, he'd just shoplift. With his keen eyes and quick hands, he was exceptional at shoplifting and had never been caught, yet it rankled him having to do it. There was nothing to it, no artistry was needed and very little skill and he felt himself above it.

  However, during that fourth week he would've done it in a heartbeat.

  Walking about the beautiful home of Miss Feanor's, his stomach growled almost non-stop and for the first time since arriving, he ate the monotonous food with gusto. He couldn't seem to get enough, but since the lady never offered a second helping, by the third day of the week, he felt shaky and frail. Having to fight the pain in his stomach in some fashion Curt began eating, of all things, toilette paper.

  Always he kept a handful of it in his pocket and nibbled at it, rat like constantly. Creating little spit balls, he rolled them around his tongue until they had practically faded away before he swallowed the remainder. Whether it helped in any way, he couldn't tell, but once he had started the gross habit, he couldn't stop. His hunger made him jittery and anxious, neither of which helped his other fascination that week, the missing paperclips. The love letters were of absolutely no interest to him, but those paperclips occupied his mind and he searched relentlessly for them.

  In a way, he began to think of them as his salvation.

  On the second day of the week, he had explored all the bedrooms, including Amber's room, obviously without her knowledge and had come away empty-handed. Slinking out of the girl's room, he spied the door to the attic just across the hall and on impulse, he went to it, in the hope that it would be unlocked.

  It wasn't.

  The knob was different than every other doorknob in the house; he had of course noted this long before, the others were all original, large and ornate, but without proper modern locks. The one to the attic however had a lock dead center in it, and it looked relatively new, with the paperclips and enough time he could pick it, he was sure of this.

  Beyond that door, lay wondrous possibilities that ensnared his imagination, he was certain almost with the zeal of religion that he'd find the key to defeating the creature there. The boy in him hoped that he would find a weapon, a great shining sword perhaps, while a slightly more logical side of him considered the possibility that he could find a charm or potion to ward it away.

  After all, Miss Feanor, though afraid of the creature, had never been attacked at least as far as Curt knew. There had to be some reason behind this and his active imagination conjured up a vision of a laboratory, filled with bubbling beakers and tubes that squirreled their way about.

  But what he hoped to find most of all was simply a window. When he had arrived with Miss Gladys, he hadn't given the house more than a cursory glance and hadn't bothered to count how many stories it consisted of. There could be a chance that the attic would hold a window, a normal glass one. One that hadn't been nailed shut, one that he could slip out of, sliding down knotted sheets to the soft green grass of the yard below.

  That was his wish.

  And there was a definite possibility that it might come true. It was unlikely that Miss Feanor would've suspected that a child, could not only pick a lock, but have the guts to attempt to escape out a window that high up and therefore probably had left the attic windows in their original state. That was why he spent almost every waking moment of that very long week, casually and not so casually looking for the spot in which Matt had hid the clips.

  It had to have been Matt. Curtis fully believed the mouse in
capable of hiding them in any but the simplest of places, while Matt walked around the house day after day with a smarmy grin on his face. The older boy acted as though he had some great secret knowledge and since the paperclips were paramount in Curt's mind, he automatically presumed to believe that Matt's secret concerned these.

  It did not.

  2

  That week lasted a total of five days.

  The rains came on the first day and the rest of the week was marked only by Curt's growing hunger and obsession, but the nights were claimed by doubt.

  There was something important going on that he was missing. The first two nights he felt it, still it was only a nagging unnamed feeling, by the third however, he began to realize the problem. The pressure had begun to build as always, but it was how everyone in the house was reacting to it that was different, and by the fourth night, Curt was downright scared by the change.

  Matt and his nasty grin seemed as relaxed at the end of the fourth day as Curt had ever seen him, and whatever secret he carried around, he had obviously shared it with Paul. After that second punishment in a row, the blonde boy had taken to keeping a hand stuffed in his mouth to keep himself from talking. It was only at meal times that he would remove it. He was a wreck and looked as if he hadn't slept since his punishment.

  But sometime during the afternoon of the fourth day, Paul perked up and stopped his unsettling habit and started a new one, which in Curt's mind was far worse. He began to look upon Curt with wide expectant eyes and he watched the younger boy eagerly. There was a savageness to him. Clearly, Paul looked forward to something unpleasant occurring to his one time friend.

  Amber changed as well.

  She fully believed that Curt had it in him to protect her from the punishments. Her trances were shorter, quieter and less frequent and this should have been for the better, and it was for her, but not for Curt. By the evening of the fourth day, the stress of protecting them both, while guarding over his areas of responsibility, as well as finding the paperclips began to overwhelm him. He felt as though he had to be in too many places at once, and he zipped about, dodging the new frightening look of Paul's, as well as the wild eyes and strange whisperings of the mouse.

  The mouse was a sad thing and a part of him wished he had left the love letters and paperclips where he had found them. She was just as crazy as always, however in that fourth week, life seemed to drain from her. Not that she had much of a life to begin with, but now she moped about, unable to concentrate even on her ridiculous cat puzzle. Every day she took it down from the shelf yet left it unopened and only knelt in front of the box, while her eyes whipped across its fading cover.

  This would go on for hours and it bothered Curt greatly to see her this way, since he done this to her. What he had done went against his code of thievery in view of the fact that the mouse, mentally couldn't afford the loss of her letters. But he couldn't feel too much sadness for her.

  "The teeth are coming."

  These were the whispered words that the mouse greeted Curt with on the morning of the fourth day. Hearing that, along with everything else going on, made that day the longest since he had arrived. She wouldn't stop, all day long she repeated the sentence and he began to fear she that she was having a premonition. No one was punished that night.

  "The teeth are coming, tonight."

  These were the words she spoke to him about an hour after breakfast on the morning of the fifth day.

  Curt pushed her away from him with more gentleness than he usually did, but still she knocked into a wall. After bouncing off it, she then forgot about him completely and went to her cat puzzle. There she whispered to the box with sad monotony.

  "The teeth are coming, tonight. The teeth are coming, tonight..."

  The words should have been upsetting, or even frightening, but now they only angered Curt.

  Right after breakfast that morning, he had ducked covertly into the living room, once again in search of his own personal holy grail: the paperclips. He had only just started running his fingers lightly along the underside of the couch when a shadow in the hallway alerted him of someone moving in his direction. He ducked behind the large piece of furniture and watched as Matt pulled the mouse into the room.

  The eldest child whispered into her ear, but his voice was so low that Curt couldn't make out the words. The whispering took a number of minutes and as it progressed, he saw that soon, the movement of Matt's lips was being matched by the mouse's. Before this, Curt had thought the mouse was just being crazy as always, but now as he stood next to the lines of books running along the shelves, listening to the mouse repeating herself in the tiny voice, he understood that Matt had been using the poor girl to get at him.

  He cursed under his breath, hating Matt, but fearing him as well. Matt had somehow turned Paul against him and now that he was using the mouse; it seemed that he'd stoop to nothing.

  Perhaps the older boy would use Amber as well, Curt thought in sudden alarm. If Matt did, Curt worried that he wouldn't be able to put off his first real punishment much longer.

  With that in mind, he kept the blonde close to him all through that fifth day. To keep his hunger at bay, as well as to keep his mind off the deep thrumming anxiety within him, Curt spent the dull hours between breakfast and dinner cleaning. The perfection demanded of him, whether it was by Miss Feanor, the creature or the house itself, meant that he frequently had to dust drapes, polish brass, wax floors, and clean baseboards among other things.

  Normally this was all done in those couple of hours during the evening, but he feared that there wouldn't be time that night. He worried he would have his hands full just staving off the combine efforts of the other children to have him punished. Therefore, he worked diligently on both his areas as well as Amber's. She was very sweet to be with, but wasn't much of a help, as she went in and out of her trances and he had to frequently stop what he was doing to shut her up by clamping a hand over her mouth.

  With all the work, the day went by surprisingly quickly and now Curt steeled himself for what he figured would be an evening of harassment.

  The previous four evenings had come and gone without any mischief. It almost didn't seem right that he should be left alone and he felt as though he were being lulled purposefully into letting down his guard. It was one of the reasons that he had cleaned so hard that day, he wanted to be ready, just in case.

  In order to spoil whatever monkey business Matt was planning, right after dinner he set Amber to guard over their areas up stairs while he watched over the lower floor. Nothing at first seemed amiss, however after a few minutes, he realized the house was too quiet.

  This might seem like an impossibility to the average person, who would think the house, at its loudest, no more noisy than a tomb, but Curt knew otherwise. He had become attuned to it and knew that after dinner, the air should have been stirring slightly with the movement of the young bodies passing through it. He should have heard the soft swish of a broom, the whisper of cloth on metal and the occasional tiny tap, tap, tap sound of water colliding with tile after a brief plunge from the end of a rag. Only ears, hypersensitive and starved for the slightest sound, could have heard these noises and when Curt did not, his anxiety doubled.

  Reaching out and touching the wall of the main floor hall, he went perfectly still. With his eyes closed, he concentrated with all his mind to feel even the slightest vibration, but there was nothing in the wall, and he felt only his heart, which began to pick up the tempo.

  After first peeking into the dining room and finding it empty, he moved down the hall with more than his usual silence, stopping to glance into the living room. It was empty as well, as was the family room.

  Was the creature coming and he missed the signs?

  That thought caused sweat to breakout down his back and just then his anxiety no longer made any pretence and showed itself for what it truly was, fear. Curt crouched quickly, putting his hand to the cool polished wood. His body was a coiled spring,
ready to fly at the first indication that the creature was heading up the stairs.

  But again, nothing.

  Confused, he stood back up and glanced down the hall toward the mudroom door. It sat unmoving, as was Miss Feanor. He could see her still in her customary chair, still staring at her customary coffee mug.

  "Hmm," he murmured.

  Whatever was occurring...if anything really was, didn't have to do with the creature or the house. Perhaps this had to do with Amber, perhaps the other children were trying to get her to conspire against him. The thought sent a coal of hot anger burning at his insides and he went creeping up the stairs.

  The second floor, he found, was as lifeless as the first. None of the other kids were there as they should have been, moving about in that noiseless but efficient way of theirs. Now Curt was sure that he would find them holed up in one of the rooms, plotting his downfall.

  He went first to Paul's room and glanced in quickly. They weren't there, but something was so out of place, that he had to look back in a second time. The boy's blankets weren't flat, neatly tucked in, as they should have been, instead the huddle form of a body lay beneath them. His mind was a confusion of thoughts at the scene. Had the creature come and gone in the fifteen minutes since dinner? Had there been a false alarm? Had someone come that close to breaking, and he and Miss Feanor had been the only ones not aware? Had Paul finished his chores early and had gone to bed?

  The last question was easiest to answer and he stepped back a few feet and peeked into the bathroom. The first thing that he noticed was that the towels sat uneven on the bar. He didn't bother to look further. Paul hadn't gone to bed early, he was afraid that the creature would be coming soon.

  This sent Curt crouching a second time, his palm to the floor and his head cocked, but still there was nothing to suggest the creature was on the move. However, the house seemed distinctly more aware than it had on the first floor. That awareness sent a stab of fear so strongly into his slim chest that it felt like pain.