The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  They could feel it moving purposely through the main floor and now Paul began pushing Curt along the hallway in a silent rush. Curt felt like a jumble of sticks and could scarcely control his limbs and as a result, they fell into the walls heavily time and again. Each time Paul would haul him back up and propel them forward once more. His bravery was fantastic, but not infinite.

  When at last Curt stumbled against the bathroom door and slid down to the floor, there was a moment's hesitation on Paul's part. The creature, just below them would turn up the stairs at any second and catch them out of bed. And then it would be a tossup, which of the two would be punished and who would be allowed to slink off and hide in their beds.

  Paul took a single glance down the steps and fled without another look back.

  Curt didn't blame him. When he peered down, he caught a swirl of movement among the shadows, the sight of which sent him into a spasm of panic. Lacking the strength to stand, he crawled like a drunken sailor after a runaway bottle. Because of his concussion, the floor seemed to heave up and down as he went but his dread had him hurrying despite that. At that moment with his back to the stairs, what he most feared was the sound of the creature charging up them.

  However, he didn't hear that sound, but only the long slow Crreik of the creature coming up, in its usual sly fashion and this he heard precisely a bare second after he had his door closed to the proper width.

  Crreik...Crreik... Crreik, Crrrreik, Crreik.

  To his addled mind, the creature seemed to moving far faster than normal. Curt struggled madly to climb the short distance into his bed, but the tilting room and the spinning walls made it a mountain and a trial that he only barely surmounted.

  Wwhhhhhh.

  His door opened just as he pulled himself under the covers and the creature came into his room, slowly, menacingly. It seemed to enjoy the terror it caused and Curt, who was properly terrorized, began to shake and quiver uncontrollably. Perhaps it was for that reason the creature hovered over him for so long. It hadn't left as it should have, he could hear it moving furtively about his bed, as if waiting for something.

  For the creature to linger there, wasn't ordinary for a first day. Normally, it just had a quick look around before moving on to the next room yet for some reason now it wouldn't leave. The building panic in Curt was becoming too much and it made him want to scream, but then he remembered what happened to Paul and he wondered if this was what the creature was waiting for.

  It wanted Curt to scream. He was suddenly quite sure of this. In fact so confident was he that this was all it needed to trigger an attack, Curt bit down on the inside of his cheeks and held on and slowly his body ceased its shivering and began to relax and before a half a minute had passed, the creature moved away from his bed and left his room. When it did, an unconquerable exhaustion swept over him and he only had time enough to remember that people who had suffered a concussion weren't suppose to be allowed to sleep, before he fell deeply asleep.

  2

  Curt had a wonderful sleep. It was deep and refreshingly free of pain, fear or anxiety.

  Upon waking, he felt all of these in abundance.

  Miss Feanor yanked back his covers, startling him out of sleep. She stared hard at him, while he could only blink stupidly, trying to focus his eyes well enough to see her. In a second, she pulled up his shirt, taking in his dark blue bruises from his punishment two days before. She was disappointed that there weren't fresher ones.

  The lady leaned in very close, "Don't bother cleaning this evening. It won't make any difference. You are going to get the punishment you deserve." With a final glare, she slid out of the room.

  Now depression struck him like a kick to the stomach. It laid him flat on his back and he lacked the will to move. Though in truth, he wouldn't have wanted to move anyways, he hurt up and down his body and was hard put to find an area that was free from pain.

  Gently he touched the foul swollen teeth marks left by his last punishment. They were everywhere upon him and they still stung, he then felt his face, and had the impression that he had been hit by Matt, more than he realized. All about his jaw, and the bones in his cheeks ached, but this was nothing compared to pain in the back of his head.

  There was a lump half the size of his fist back there and he could scarcely touch it without crying out. He almost did. His depression made it so that he didn't care when his punishment came. In fact, he wanted it sooner rather than later. Since it was currently raining, he decided to get the punishment out of the way so that he could at least relax the rest of the day instead of worrying over the coming night.

  "What a waste of a good rainy day," he mumbled to himself, before attempting to get up. Despite what everyone had said, he couldn't see himself just laying there waiting to be attacked, he would fight back, even if the odds were against him.

  "Holy crap," he moaned through gritted teeth. The pain throughout his body was exquisite and it took a great deal of will power just to sit up. He tried to concentrate on the rain, thinking how he would lie there the rest of the day, simply listening to the soothing sound.

  Swinging his legs around, he grunted loudly, he didn't care since he was just about to get louder still. But Amber cared and she came rushing in. The look in her eyes told him all he needed to know about what he must have looked like. She stared and stared, her eyes dancing over his many bruises and cuts while her face betrayed her misery.

  He became embarrassed at her scrutiny, "Why don't you go get in bed. I..."

  "Shush!" she hissed at him, covering his mouth at the same time. He pulled back from her touch and almost fell over in the process.

  "It's ok," he murmured, quietly this time just to mollify her. "First, it's raining and second... I have to be punished."

  She looked confused and cocked an ear. After a moment she mouthed, 'It's not raining.'

  "Sure it is..." He paused listening. Just then, he noticed that the rain sounded fuzzy, more like a poorly tuned radio. Curt looked toward the window and light streamed in through the slits of the shutters, confusing him.

  Working his jaw around, he said, "Weird."

  However, the words came out in a much quieter voice. It wasn't raining, there was something wrong with his hearing. This sudden realization gave him a scare and he started to have second thoughts about being punished just then.

  "You don't have to be punished...this is my fault," she whispered in a voice only slightly louder than her normal exhaling. "I'm sorry for last night, for everything." Her hair fell in front of her face and she didn't try to move it, but hid herself behind the blonde curtain. She started to cry and he held her, not having a clue as to what she was talking about, then he suddenly remembered Matt and he stiffened against her. She had nothing to apologize for.

  "You were just being brave...for me. You don't need to apologize for that," he whispered in reply. "But when I have my revenge on Matt...don't try to interfere." His battered face was hard and menacing as he said the last.

  She stepped back from him and he was glad to see the slight apprehension in her eyes, but he was gladder still that she didn't try to argue with him about it. After a moment, she told him what it was that she was sorry for.

  "I'm not sorry for that...I'm sorry because..." She paused looking around, blinking back more tears. "I'm sorry that I didn't get out of bed to help you. I couldn't...I tried, but I just couldn't. Once the lights went down..."

  This time she paused in alarm. The room had become charged with that nasty awareness as the house focused on their whispered discussion. Curt shushed her lips by putting his swollen ones to hers and they kissed with gentleness until the feeling died away.

  'Come eat,' she motioned. 'You have to keep your strength up.'

  She helped him along the hall to the back stairs and the more they moved the better his legs felt beneath him. Conversely however, the more they moved, the more his head pounded. Curt had never had such a throbbing headache in his life and he was suddenly thankful for
the quiet of the house.

  There was no way he'd be able to eat breakfast that morning. The very thought curdled his stomach and he worried that this would be another strike against him with Miss Feanor. But he needn't have worried. When the two finally got to the nook, he saw that his bowl was empty and not because someone else had eaten his food. Miss Feanor had left it purposely so and she wore a nasty look that had a touch of maternal vindictiveness that he associated with the feeling of the house.

  Despite the fact that she had inadvertently done him a favor by not making him eat, she was being over the top cruel in her desire to punish him. As if being hit over the head with a bat wasn't enough, she was going to sic the creature on him that night and as a final straw, she wasn't going to feed him.

  He turned from the table quickly, not wanting his emotions to betray him. Feeling overwhelmed, he put a hand to his eyes as if to wipe away a tear and tottered slowly out of the room. He wasn't at all sad.

  He was angry.

  More angry than he had ever been. Angry enough to kill.

  Chapter 23

  A Night Out

  1

  Curt, by nature was not a killer.

  By nature, he was thief. Not only was he genetically gifted with all the physical abilities of one, he was gifted mentally as well. His mind was as nimble as his fingers and his wit quicker than his feet. However, no thief becomes one through genetics but rather through happenstance.

  Had Curt's first foster-care placement been to one of the many, many loving homes in the system, he would most assuredly look like the very picture of a normal happy kid. Unfortunately, his first placement was in a foster-farm.

  A foster-farm is one where the children are treated as little more than human livestock. They are not there to be raised in a normal family environment while they await adoption or re-unification with their own families, as the system intends. Rather, the children are simply a way for the 'foster-parents' to get easy money with little or no effort.

  Six year-old Curt found himself as one of seven children, living in squalor that was only a small step up from living with his drug-addicted prostitute of a mom. He was inadequately fed, clothed, bathed and most importantly supervised. Little Curt was the youngest of the children and as such, his belongings, meager as they were, became the property of others. And that included his food. Once again, he turned to petty crime and begging to survive.

  Just then, sitting on his bed gently massaging the pain in his face, he missed that house. He even missed the 'foster-mom', Mrs. Frailey. She did nothing all day, but smoke, eat, and watch soap operas. She was horribly repulsive, with greasy unwashed hair and a black moustache and Curt would've kissed her face if she would just walk in the front door and take him out of there.

  Curt didn't want to be a killer.

  In fact, he was a little afraid to even start down that path. Up to the moment, when he walked out of the kitchen, everything in his life had reinforced and supported his future as a thief. It was as if the universe wanted it that way and had structured events and circumstances to nurture the rogue within him. He saw it as destiny. But he knew his destiny could change in the blink of an eye. His mother was a fine example. One moment on the fast track of life, the next a waste of space, using up oxygen.

  Killing could be like that. He saw it as walking through a grated subway entrance. It was one way only. Go through those doors and you were a killer for life, and a part of him knew that if he were to kill just once, the next murder would be easier and the one after that easier still. There was a resistance to killing within each person, ingrained not only morally, but also on a level far deeper than that. Deeper even than genetically and he suspected there was a spiritual aspect that kept man from killing his fellows with ease.

  It was for this reason that Curt went to his room and despite his thumping head, worked through every possible method he could think of to escape. But it was a futile exercise, one that he had gone over a thousand times prior to that morning and before he knew it, he was fast asleep.

  Sometime later, he woke feeling much better. His arms were numb from lying on them and the drool puddle on his pillow was very large so that he suspected he had slept a few hours at least. He found Amber guarding over the outside of his bedroom and he actually teared up at the sight of her there. No one had ever cared for him that much before. It made him pause until he was under control again.

  They kissed gently for a few moments when he finally came out and then she pushed him back into his room. She was desperate to know what had happened to him. He whispered the story with painful slowness into her ear so as not to awaken the house's anger. When he was done, she looked very sad for him.

  "She- must- have- figured- out- where- you- got- the- piece- of- metal- from. She- has- taken- all- the- lids- from- the- comet- containers." Amber whispered these two short sentences over a period of a minute, one word at a time. The news sank his spirits even though he had suspected that his secret hadn't remained one for long. The tiny piece of metal hadn't been lying near the attic door, he had checked.

  "I was afraid of that," he said slow and soft. "Who do you think those two people are up there?" he asked pointing to the ceiling.

  She shrugged.

  "What should we do?" he asked.

  He had already decided that they had to die. Oh, so badly, he wanted revenge on both Miss Feanor and Matt, but even more, he longed for freedom and he figured that the two people were connected to the house in some way, and he felt confident that they had something to do with the horrid feminine and masculine spirits haunting the place. His gut told him they were likely the physical bodies of the two, and simply put, that meant they would have to die. From his point of view it was a choice between his slow horrible death and their quick ones.

  But he didn't really want to come out and say it. He wanted Amber to tell him to kill the two; he thought it would make him feel less...guilty. However, she only shrugged again.

  An exasperated sigh escaped him, slightly angry with her he whispered, "I think we should kill them."

  That she didn't ask why, told him she agreed with his assessment of who they were. She looked down for a time, "I d-d-don't think I c-c-can."

  He glared hard at her and seeing this, she began to cry, ashamed of her cowardice. Because he felt bad at causing her tears, he pulled her in close, whispering how much he loved her. This wasn't her fault, he reminded himself; since she had been trapped here from the age of ten, in many ways she was more of a child than he was.

  "Do you at least think it's a good idea?" he asked gently, hoping for a little support. She nodded timidly. It was better than nothing.

  2

  Now that he decided he would kill the two, he set his considerable intellect against the various barriers in his way. First he'd need a weapon and second, a way to get past the attic door.

  The weapon was the easiest to get.

  His initial thought was to use the same stake that had been used to scar up the face of his girlfriend and setting Amber to keep watch, he ducked into Matt's room. The stake had looked exactly like a part of the underside of the box spring in a bed frame. Even as he searched Matt's bed, his intuition told him he was searching in the wrong place. Curt thought that Matt was too devious to be that obvious.

  He was correct. The underside of Matt's bed was unblemished. With a snort, he went back to his own room and checking his bed, saw the stake. It was aligned nicely but the cracks along its edges were obvious when looked for and in a second, he had yanked it out. With Ambers dried blood running along one edge, it was nasty looking.

  The sight of the brown discoloration turned his stomach and he wondered if he'd be able to stab it into a live person. There was little choice in the matter and he decided he would just have to find a way.

  Next, he bent his mind on a way to get into the attic. Taking up a position in Amber's room with a view of the attic door, he studied it and his options. After an hour, he had discovered what he alre
ady knew; it was a plain white heavy door with a lock that he had no way to pick. Curt was out of options, save for knocking on the door and asking to be let in.

  Anxiety over his coming punishment added to a depression that threatened to sink him. For the first part of his vigil, Amber lay on the bed looking pensive, her face even more anxious than his, but now she was asleep. Her worries were gone and she was more beautiful than ever. Curt reclaimed his optimism in the way her hair shimmered and looked so soft, in the way her angular face would make a model jealous and perhaps more importantly in the fact that she was his. He was lucky and he'd find a way in.

  Minutes later, he found the means to access the attic. As Miss Feanor made the second of her two daily visits to check on the people up there, he saw the smallest opportunity. It was a horribly dangerous way and it possibly meant more bloodshed, but there was no other choice. Waking Amber, he told her what he considered doing and she sat back saying little, only thinking about the ramifications of his failure.

  After a few minutes, she gave him a piercing look. "Can- you- really- do- it?" she asked in their slow way. He nodded and she nodded in return, which was her way of agreeing with his plan. It surprised him a little, he had assumed that she would attempt to talk him out of going through with it and was very glad that she hadn't.

  Now came perhaps the worst part of his plan, the wait. Things would not be in position until the lights had been turned down right before bed and that was still a few hours away. Even in the best of circumstances, he wasn't good at waiting. But in a house where there was absolutely nothing to do, it was the purest tedium. He paced, until his head hurt. He listened to Amber talk, one slow word at a time, until his head hurt. He even showered until he ran out of hot water, and then his head hurt.

  The one productive thing that he wanted to accomplish backfired and yes, it made his head hurt. Curt went to find Paul, and Amber, who seemed afraid to be left alone, went with him. They found a boy who looked like Paul sitting on his bed.