The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  Amber screamed again. Long and piercing. This one bespoke of fantastic pain. It carried throughout the house and the house took it in with relish, Curt could feel its nasty voyeuristic enjoyment through the wall under his hand. It made him sick with anger, and he started forward not exactly sure what he was going to do when he got to her room, but only sure that he would stop her from being hurt. If he could.

  However, he had only taken two steps before a hand reached out and spun him around and he found himself staring up into Matt's eyes. The hall light hadn't been turned on and in the dim, the older boy's brown eyes were black. Deep black. Black with anger and remorseless hate. Startled and more than a little bit fearful, Curt flinched back, striking the wall behind him.

  There was a flash of movement to his left and instinctively Curt put up a protective arm, but he was too slow. Matt struck him in the side of the head with the back end of his stake, toppling Curt to the floor.

  3

  The ceiling of the hall was at first a spinning nightmare, he couldn't make sense of it, nor could he understand the screams that drifted in distantly to his ears. Lying on his back, his world was a great confusion. Eventually Curt focused enough to see a very tall figure towering above him. The person, gaunt with a dark, almost purple face, seemed to be on a teeter-totter, waving up and down. That first minute, he couldn't recognize who it was, but as the figure knelt down, squatting heavily upon Curt's chest, he saw that it was Matt.

  Matt brought the stake close to Curt's face, very near to his blue eye, however that close, Curt lost focus on it and it seemed to disappear. Instead, he looked at what he could see, and noticed Matt speaking but though he could see the boy's lips moving, he couldn't hear the words. There was simply too much noise.

  In his head a great rushing sound filled him, and the only thing he could hear beyond that, were screams. They came from all around him, even coming up from the wood of the floor, or so it seemed and he wondered if it was he himself who cried out with such pain. It couldn't have been he decided, since he barely felt any pain at all. He barely felt anything, and was only dimly aware of his limbs.

  "Hey!" Matt shook him roughly and at first Curt's eyes swam even more out of focus, but then they sharpened until he could see the stake clearly. The thing held no fear for him whatsoever. His eyes might have focused, but his brain was far from it.

  "Huh?" he asked looking past the browned tip of the stick.

  Matt's eyes, very dark and angry, peered into his, "Hey! Do you hear that?"

  Curt could hear the screaming more clearly all of a sudden. The huge rushing in his ears became less with every second. "Who is that?" Curt asked. It seemed suddenly very important that he knew.

  "That's Amber, and you did that to her. You! You did that to her," Matt hissed. "That should be you being punished. What a coward you are, letting a little girl get punished for you."

  "Amber?" Curt began to remember. Bit and pieces, flashes of images, of running throughout the house, of standing in the basement, feeling the wet air covering his skin, of watching the black thing becoming solid in the darkness and finally of seeing Matt straddling Amber with the stake poised above her eye.

  "No...that was you. You did this to her," Curt said feebly. Now the stake grew in importance to him and from where he lay, the thing suddenly looked like a spike or part of a long spear. It gave him a twinge seeing how readily it could puncture his eye.

  "Wrong, this is all your..." Matt started to say, however a new sort of scream came from Amber's room. It seemed impossible, but the pain in her voice doubled and now they could hear a frantic beating of something upon the floor, vibrating through the wood. The sounds clearly unnerved Matt and he pulled back quickly looking ready to run.

  "That's going to be you, tomorrow," Matt whispered, very low. The older boy heaved himself off of Curt's chest and a moment later, he glided silent as a breeze toward his room.

  The scream had unnerved Curt as well and with a feeling of growing panic that he would be too late to help Amber, he tried to get up. Three times, he attempted to pull himself up, yet each time his head spun so much that he collapsed. On the fourth attempt, he clawed at the wall and managed to get to his hand and knees, and he swayed there, red spots blooming in his vision, but then he saw dark red spots appearing on the wood. These were different. They didn't fade in and out, as the others had and feeling vaguely upset, he swiped at them with one of his hands.

  They were wet and left a red smear upon the wood. He was bleeding. Somewhere on his head, he was bleeding, he didn't care too much. The only thing that held any sort of attention was Amber. She screamed and sobbed frantically, but it was all Curt could do to kneel on his hands and knees. His head felt huge and now pain started to wash over him.

  "Uhhhh," he let out a slight moan of pain and fought to stand up only to collapse to his knees again. Not knowing about the cumulative effect of concussions, he couldn't understand how being hit in the head with the end of the stake could be as bad as being hit with the baseball bat. His vision went in and out, while the hallway seemed to spin, but he needed to get to Amber.

  Stifling more groans and a growing need to vomit, he crawled slowly along, and as he did, he noted that Amber's screams had become sporadic, with more loud sobbing between the cries. Her punishment was coming to an end. Though at the moment, time was impossible for him to fully grasp, it seemed that her torture had been relatively quick and naively, he felt relief for her.

  For a few seconds more he doggedly crawled on toward her room before it dawned on his injured mind that it would be better to get back to bed before the creature finished with Amber and caught him in the hall. Slowly he crawled the eight feet to his room and pulled himself into his bed, where he had meant to wait out the end of her punishment before going to see how she was. However, he didn't count on the effects of a head injury and he passed out almost as soon as the blankets covered him.

  4

  It was full dark when he came awake with a pounding head.

  "Uhhhh," a moan escaped him involuntarily and he pulled back the covers. Gingerly he touched his scalp where Matt had struck him. Beneath a great mat of dried blood he could feel the wound swollen to the size of an egg. Another small moan escaped him, and just then he heard a soft child like whimper. It came from the hall.

  Amber!

  He climbed out of bed, and had to hold fast to the door for a few seconds as his knees threatened to send him crashing to the floor. But when the feeling passed, he went out into the dark of the hall. A small figure lay upon the floor halfway down it and Curt rushed over, uncaring that he was breaking the most important rule of the house.

  The person on the floor was indeed Amber and despite the night, Curt could see that she was covered in blood, it was dark against her white skin. More blood trailed out behind her, leading back to her bedroom, the sight of which caused Curt to gasp, horrified. There was a lot of blood.

  Amber was only semi-conscious and slippery with fresh blood so it took every bit of Curt's strength to pull her into the bathroom. Breathing heavily, he snapped on the overhead lights and his wind caught in his throat as he saw the atrocious wounds covering her. That she had fought back was clear by the number of defensive wounds she bore. Her arms were no longer clean limbed and smooth. They had been bitten dreadfully and in some places, the bites had gone clear to the bone. These still bled profusely and Curt took a number of smaller hand towels and bound them tightly.

  The creature had ripped away her shirt, leaving just rags and there were more bite marks the length of her torso, but thankfully none of these were very deep and only a few still bled. He cleaned them as best as he could and then inspected her face. She had fought to save her face and for the most part, she had succeeded, though her left eyebrow was partially torn away. There was also a series of ugly bruises and fresh teeth marks high up on her forehead, but all in all, her face looked much better than Matt's did.

  She came awake more fully as he washed the wou
nds on her face and began to cry in pain, clutching her hands to her chest.

  "I'm sorry, Amber," Curt said softly. "I tried to come and save you, but Matt attacked me. I'm so sorry."

  "M-m-m my hands," she whimpered through her tears.

  "Your hands?" he asked, confused. Her hands had been clenched into fists and covered with blood, he had assumed it was blood from her other injuries. "Let me see them," he demanded quietly.

  She held them out and they shook, dripping.

  "Uh...." Curt was at a loss for words. On her left hand, most of her pinky was gone and a tiny bone stuck up out of the raw looking wound. Her ring finger of the same hand had been chewed down to the second knuckle. Both fingers bled freely, making her hand glisten bright red. Her right hand wasn't so horrible to look upon. The fingers were all intact, but a huge chunk of meat from her palm below her pinky had been torn off. This wound bled a great deal as well.

  "I'm going to bleed to death, aren't I?" Amber said in a fear-quivered voice. She couldn't seem to stop staring at her hands, her head turning from one to the other, repeatedly.

  "No. You won't bleed to death, you'll be ok," Curt replied, not knowing at all if that were indeed the truth. He got up and rushed to the closet that held the extra sheets, rummaging through them.

  "Don't leave me!" Amber cried out to him.

  The words had been very loud and Curt's heart skipped a beat, he grabbed the first sheet his hand fell upon and dashed back.

  "Amber, please. I know it hurts, but it's still night out. You can't scream like that...it might come again," Curt whispered. Her head snapped to the window and her eyes went big with the realization that he was right.

  "Don't leave me," she blubbered this time more quietly. "Don't let me die here."

  Curt found a weak spot on the sheet and began tearing it in long strips and as he worked, he reassured her, "You won't die here. I'll tie up these wounds and this shou...this will stop the bleeding. Ok?" She nodded to him, trusting him. He was relatively sure that he could stop the bleeding, after all, he had never heard of someone bleeding to death from being bitten like this.

  It was infection, however that scared him.

  His whole life, he had scoffed at the specter of infection. Like all boys, he had been cut and scraped a thousand times over and never once gave these minor injuries a second thought, unless it was to brag about or to hope for a cool looking scar. However, Amber's wounds were far worse than anything he had ever had to contend with and that bone sticking up made him anxious.

  He tried his best to clean the pinky, hoping the bone would simply wash away, but it didn't and whats more, it hurt her so badly that it was all he could do just to run water over it and even then, he couldn't clean inside it. It looked sort of hollow and again the thought of infection came to mind, chilling him.

  She stifled her cries as best she could as he bound up her fingers and though the pillowcase soon turned a deep red-brown color, the bleeding looked to eventually stop. Her head wound was another matter altogether. That bled continuously. Not in great gushing waves, but in a trickle that wouldn't stop. Not until he held a strip of cloth there for nearly a half hour, pressing it hard to her skull did it eventually end.

  While they sat there waiting, he asked in a very quiet tone, "Why did you call out to the creature? I would have taken the punishment for you. In fact, I tried but Matt smashed me in the head and knocked me out...for a while, see?" He turned so that she could see the mat of blood, tangled in his hair. In truth, he hadn't been knocked out at all, though he definitely suffered a second concussion. But what she had done, being tortured in his stead, had been very brave and he felt the need not to look like a coward in her eyes.

  Her face went from misery to anger, "I hate him so much. I would kill him if I could." Her voice had a hard bitter quality, "If I was a boy I would k-k-k-kill him for sure."

  Curt looked away briefly in shame. He was after all a boy, yet he didn't think he could kill Matt, in fact, he was afraid to even try. Matt was just too big, too devious and what's more he was evil, lacking any scruples whats so ever.

  Amber didn't seem to notice his look and proceeded in a low whisper, "He's the reason I called out to the monster. He kept talking about putting you in the basement. He even said he was going to feed you to the monster." Curt swallowed hard at that, feeling his stomach do a slow barrel roll. She went on, "And I knew you were the only one who could stop Matt and save us from the monster. So I...so I..." she trailed off, not needing to explain the rest.

  Now Curt was at a loss at what to say. He didn't think he could do either of the things she had mentioned and it must have shown on his face.

  "You have a new plan right? You have to have one. Please tell me you have one?" Panicky fear made her voice tremble, "The monster is getting worse, way worse. It's going to start eating us for real. I could tell when it was chewing on me, it got so excited that its thing..." she stopped talking abruptly and only cried in quiet misery.

  Curt felt like crying too. He wanted to cry for her pain and what she went through for him. He wanted to cry in fear of what tomorrow would bring and he wanted to cry in frustration. He had no way to get the keys to the car from the attic and no way to get the rest of the doors open. And he could count on no help from the other children. Paul was a schizo and practically blind, the mouse was too insane even to make toast, Matt was his mortal enemy and would rather die a horrible death than to help Curt, and now Amber, with her hands torn up as they were, was practically a cripple, in other words, she was useless.

  In essence, he had nothing; no help, no hope, no plan and no way short of a miracle, would he be able to come up with one by the next morning.

  Curt could find nothing to say and eventually Amber looked at him through her tears. He saw her faith in him fading from her face and she began shaking her head, and whether she meant it or not, there was accusation in her eyes. It made him feel small that he was letting her down and with a feeling of desperation, he fell back upon what he knew best.

  "Don't worry, I do have a plan," he lied. So smooth was the lie that despite the horror that she had gone through for him, a smile lit up the pallor of her face and her blue eyes shown bright with renewed hope.

  Chapter 31

  A Plan To Lie

  1

  He put her to bed and kissed away her tears. Her hands, in their red-brown wrappings shook almost nonstop. They had to hurt terribly and she made great measures not to let them touch anything, so that he even pulled the covers over her head for her.

  "Is that ok?" he asked. "Can I get you anything?"

  There was nothing in the house that he could get for her, but he felt that he should ask nonetheless.

  "No...th-th-thank you," her breath hitched in her chest, making him feel even more miserable. Her pain was his fault. She had gone through that hell for nothing. "I l-love y-y-you," she whispered.

  "I love you too." Another lie. Inside, he felt dead.

  He went back to his bed, thinking that he'd spend the rest of the night coming up with a plan, one that would be foolproof. Instead, he fretted and worried, sweating through his pajamas.

  "That's going to be you, tomorrow," Matt had whispered to him. The screams of Amber's had been horrendous. Their memory stayed with him all night long, making it impossible to think beyond them. The worst screams, the one that had been accompanied by the thrumming of her heels upon the floor, must have been when the creature had bitten off her fingers. Each time he pictured it, he felt a nasty sickness and at one point when he envisioned what would happen the next day and saw his own fingers being bitten off, he laughed aloud, feeling a mania come over him. To think he had been worried about infection! The creature's attacks were escalating in severity and he felt it in his bones that death was right around the corner.

  And if one of them were to die, the others were going to follow suit very quickly, and infection would be the least of their worries.

  At some point, he fell into a ni
ghtmare-plagued sleep. In the dream, Curt spent hours running and hiding from Matt and always the boy stayed just behind him. As he ran through the rooms, he saw the other children beneath their sheets but they were no longer hiding. The sheets above them were all stained through, bright red and without looking under them, Curt knew that they were all dead.

  Eventually, Curt became trapped in Paul's room and in desperation, he ducked under the sheet, hiding with a mutilated corpse. It looked as though it had been feasted upon by a horde of sharks, great chunks of flesh had been ripped from the boy and the many teeth marks in his body were quite evident. They were so obvious and perfectly preserved that it seemed that Paul's flesh might have been made from cheese.

  Despite the horror of the corpse, Curt forced himself to snuggle close to it, until Matt had moved away into a different room. At that point, he was up and running, breathing in great gasps to clear his lungs of a rotten smell that lingered there. He made it to the kitchen only to be trapped again. Matt seemed to be coming from two directions at once and suddenly, the basement door came open and Curt could see the stairs heading down; they were draped in shadows.

  In dream slow motion, he backed up as greater fear settled onto him, just then a shadow passed across the doorway and danced there and with the shadow came a deep cold that set him immediately shivering. Curt backed away again until he reached the counter and then all in the basement was a midnight black, but still a shadow played in it.

  As was usual with dreams, he was without reason, and he found himself hiding within the cabinet where the extra food was stored. Unlike reality, it was filled with food. Tins and tins of pink spam were stacked all about him and seeing it all, suddenly made his stomach growl and before he knew it, he had a tin of it opened. Now the meat looked as it always did, pink and slightly gelatinous, but when he dug his fork down into it, blood welled up around the tines. In disgust, he threw the can from him and it landed on its side so that the meat slid out, pink and bleeding, looking suddenly like processed human flesh. He gaped at it, feeling sick, and he wanted to flee from his hiding place in the cabinet, certain that all the new cans of spam would hold the same revulsion, but just then, Matt came in to the kitchen carrying somebody covered by a red stained sheet.