One by One

by D. W. Gillespie

  Onward, they went into the dark. Alice could almost imagine they were walking on the surface of an alien planet, something so barren and empty that it couldn’t possibly hold any life. The trail stretched before them, a corridor into blackness, and she walked mindlessly, one foot in front of the other. The pain of the cold grew, multiplied, became something else entirely. The cold turned to heat, the ice to fire, the pain to nothingness. When she realized that she couldn’t feel her feet at all, a surge of white-hot panic rose up in her.

  They’re dead. Those feet are dead. The rest of you will be soon enough.

  Alice looked back and gasped when she saw how far they had come. The lights of the house were mere pinpricks on the horizon. Walker was staring back as well, the pain of this trip clear on his face as it surely was on Alice’s.

  When you die, he’ll use that knife. He’ll cut you open and stick his hands inside to warm up.

  Alice felt like crying, like screaming, like curling up and letting the windswept snow bury her. Her pace slowed, and she readied herself to tumble face-first into the powder, to give up once and for all. That was when she saw the tracks. They were small, narrow things, a neat, tidy row of paw prints, two small ones followed by two larger, flatter ones.

  Rabbits.

  Of course. These woods might look dead, but they were alive. There were coyotes, foxes, things that ate rabbits, and somehow they survived. A voice spoke to her, something from the past, a book read aloud whose name she couldn’t place in that moment.

  If they catch you, they will kill you…but first, they must catch you.

  It wasn’t Mary or any of the arguing voices this time. It was her father, reading her books at bedtime. There were real fathers in the world, not this abomination that followed along behind her.

  That’s right, girl, Mary whispered. That’s right, little rabbit. Don’t let him beat you. If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for me.

  Alice straightened up and walked on. Soon, the shed loomed before them. Had it looked so grim during the day? In the dark and the blowing snow, it looked crooked somehow, bent and evil, as if all the malice and terror that still lived in the house had originated here. This was the mouth of a river made of grief, despair, abuse, pain, fear, and of course, human shit. And at the sight of it, hopeful energy surged through her.

  That’s right, Mary said. Win or lose, it’s time to put an end to all of this.

  Alice stopped a few feet away and leaned on her knees. From the corner of her eye, she saw Walker reaching into his shirt. The key for the heavy lock was hiding near his chest, tied with a piece of thick twine. His hands were shaking when he reached for the lock, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the cold.

  He’s afraid, the gentle voice whispered.

  He should be, Mary spat.

  The door flung open, and a bitter smell of old, unwashed bodies drifted out from within.

  “In,” he said gruffly, motioning with the knife. He seemed to have given up on trying to sound like Mary.

  He doesn’t know who he is.

  Alice stepped into the dark, and Walker pulled the door shut behind them. For a moment, she stood there in the semi-darkness, wrinkling her nose and trying not to touch anything. Then a struck match into a kerosene lantern revealed the saddest, most disturbing apartment she had ever seen. There was a table on one end, filthy, scattered, with metal plates and cups, faded silverware, and even a few deer antlers lying loose, trophies that were never hung. The walls were lined with more of the hand-drawn pictures. At first, she assumed they were all Mary’s old drawings, but they were too neat. Too well drawn. She realized that these were all drawn by Walker, a child’s crude illustrations filtered through the mind of a grown man. On the opposite wall, another tattered mattress rested in the corner. Beside it, stacked in the corner, were a compound bow, some arrows, and a rifle. Behind her, just beside the door, was a can of kerosene.

  This was the life he had lived for the past two years. Hunting and trapping what he could. Maybe scavenging the nearby houses for supplies. Drifting between his two bachelor pads, one here, one in the abandoned attic. It might have gone on like that forever if they hadn’t moved in, if they hadn’t shaken up his world. Alice hugged herself tightly, not wanting any part of her or her clothes to touch the walls. The madness might seep into her.

  Alice took it all in, trying to imagine what his life had been. That was when she noticed the cardboard box in the corner, tucked under the table. The top was folded outward, and she could see the contents plain as day. Magazines, old ones with naked women on the covers, the page curled and filthy. There were small cases as well, DVDs from the looks of them, the details all a blur, but enough for her to know exactly what she was looking at. It was the boy at the fair all over again, the porn that Walker hid out here, away from his family.

  A special place.

  Walker stood in the center of the room, his back to Alice, staring at the pictures on the wall, his crude crayon drawings contrasting luridly against the women, with their splayed legs in the magazines. Was there some story here, one that only he could see in the wall of drawings?

  Little girl. Sunset. Father’s hands. Rabbits running. Rainbows. Storm clouds. Grassy hills. Gray woods. Mother. Brother. Dog.

  Family.

  He stared at it. She could hear him breathing.

  “It happened here,” he whispered, so softly that Alice could barely hear it. Was he talking to her at all?

  “He had to pay. He couldn’t fix it.”

  Alice swallowed hard. The wind whistled outside. The sound of it made her cold all over again, as if she were cold for the first time.

  “Did he pay?” she whispered back.

  Walker began to sob. “Yes…”

  Alice could hear him crying, and numbly, she wondered if the sound of his grief would make her cry as well.

  No, Mary said. Cry later. Cry for yourself. Cry for me if you want to. But not for him. Never for him.

  She reached down and picked up the can of kerosene. “Here.”

  Walker was still sobbing when he took the can and began to spread the kerosene around the room from corner to corner. Alice watched. She still didn’t know how it would end, but a calm had fallen over her. There was some peace in him now, and while she didn’t expect him to just walk into the woods and let her go, she wasn’t afraid of him in the same way. The monster had been burned away. Only a pathetic, pitiful man remained.

  Walker dropped the can and reached for a pack of matches that sat on the table. He picked them up, fished one out, and held it to the side of the box. Suddenly, he froze.

  “What is it?” Alice asked.

  He was shaking his head. The sobbing had stopped.

  “It’s still not right,” he said to himself, the high pitch returned to his voice. “I can still fix this.”

  “What?”

  He stepped toward her, pushing her back against the table. She bumped the lantern, which nearly tipped over behind her.

  “You’re just an extra daughter we don’t need. I’ll burn this place, and I’ll burn you too,” he said, looming over her. “Then you’ll be out of the way. It will be perfect.”

  “Wait, please…”

  “We’ll be a family again.”

  He raised the knife, and Alice’s hand brushed against something hard, curled, bumpy. Every voice inside her spoke a single word at the same time.

  Antler.

  Time ceased to exist. There was only that moment, the two sides of the coin, the knife above her, the curled, bony antler below, and her in the center.

  She was the fulcrum.

  She was the edge of the coin.

  Mary’s voice.

  Do it.

  Alice swung. Then she pulled her hand back, leaving the antler behind. It jutted out from his neck, sticking out like a strange grow
th from under his chin. He opened his mouth to scream, but he couldn’t. His mouth was filling with blood. Deep in that bubbling hole, a bit of yellowish white. The tip of the antler, piercing his tongue.

  He gurgled, dropped the knife, and began pawing at the hunk of antler protruding from his neck. In his madness, he spun around, knocking Alice back into the table with a swipe of his long arms. Her weight threw the table back, and it tilted against the wall. Alice saw the lantern, just next to her, both hovering and slipping through space as Walker spun and screamed. Alice was able to catch herself, to regain her footing as the lantern hit the ground a few feet away. She didn’t need to see what happened. She could hear it. Stumbling, she made her way for the door as the lantern burst. A whooshing sound rose up behind her as she flung open the door and spilled out into the snow.

  As she reached for the door her mind took in the scene before her, a hundred images overlaid in the span of a single second. It would take her years to parse through what she saw, to try to make sense of it, but even then, it was a fool’s work. Her mind had done her a kindness and broke the image into pieces, small enough to process.

  A circle of flame, spreading, a wreath of fire swallowing everything. A man in a pink, shiny jacket, the plastic fabric not so much burning as melting, seeping down his body in shiny ribbons. A plume of blood running down from his neck, covering him like a red bib. A hand, strong, wild, clutching a hunk of deer antler and ripping it free.

  And most of all, the eyes. Mad. Cold. Pitiful. Staring straight at her. Alice backed away, her body shaking from the cold, the fear, the pain of the flames that were rising in front of her, threatening to swallow them both. Walker reached forward with blood-soaked hands, and those wild, mad eyes began to roll back.

  Was it blood loss? Pain? Smoke?

  Alice never knew. But as she backed away, she saw him slump down, the smoke and fire consuming him. She turned to run, but froze just a few feet away. A part of her, the kind, sweet part, didn’t want to know that a man was dying a few paces from her. It was torture to run away, to listen to the crackling fire chase her through the dark woods. But another part, the sliver of her mind that she called Mary, a part of her mind that had always been there, always with her, told her there was no saving him, no other way. And in the long, frozen trek back to the awful house, Alice believed it.

  Her family, still tied to their chairs, turned their heads as she walked into the kitchen, their faces telling the story, waiting to see if she was returning alone. Dean was halfway across the kitchen by then, trying to slide his chair across the room to get a knife to cut them free. Frank, whose face was now a pale greenish color under the blood, had to peel his face off the table to look at her. Debra’s eyes told Alice all she needed to know about how much her mother loved her.

  “Where is he?” Dean asked.

  “Gone.”

  Alice’s voice was syrupy. Her eyes felt like she had bits of gravel rubbed into them. As she cut them free, the other members of her family went back and forth between watching the door behind her and gazing at Alice. They looked at her as if she weren’t the same person who had walked in, as if maybe Walker were wearing her skin.

  “What happened?” Dean asked as she sawed at his ropes.

  “He…burned.”

  No one asked again.

  When Dean was free, he took the knife.

  “I’ll do it,” he said, looking at her with an unsure glance. Alice sat down again, back where she was before as Dean freed their parents, first Frank, then Debra. Everyone had something to do, something to keep them busy. Dean helped Frank to the couch and fetched a handful of paper towels to stop the gash on his face. Then, once his dad was settled, he ran to his room and came back out with a baseball bat as he scanned the back door. Debra hugged her daughter furiously, then began checking her for wounds. Finally, convinced that her daughter was at least physically safe, she grabbed a garbage bag from the pantry and put what was left of Baxter into it.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Debra said when she returned. “You saved us.”

  Alice nodded. There was no pride in it. No sense of accomplishment. Just a simple confirmation. Debra was on the phone moments later, screaming at the dispatcher. Alice sat there on the couch as the family swirled around. It was busy all of a sudden. It was like a real family again. From the sound of it, the cops were on the way. They would be there soon in one of the four-wheel drives that had been running all day. They were finally bumped up on the priority list.

  The house was alive again. No more ghosts. Just a family, busy as families always were. Alice stared at the blank television, same as she had yesterday afternoon. It was an odd feeling, knowing the events that had bridged those hours.

  Tap, tap, tap…

  Alice heard it, but she didn’t glance away from the black screen. She couldn’t. She had nothing left to give, no energy left to expend.

  Tap, tap…

  It was just the wind anyway. A sound as familiar as her own breath at this point. If she didn’t look, it would always be the wind. It couldn’t be anything else. All she had to do was not look, never look, never, never, never…

  Tap…

  Alice looked.

  Walker stood at the wide, sliding glass door. His clothes had burned away, almost everything except his boots. His beard was gone, and ribbons of pink, melted jacket covered his body in patches. His penis was a curled, black stump between his legs.

  ”Daddy,” he whispered into the glass.

  “I’m cold, Daddy. I want to come back inside. Please, Daddy…”

  Alice screamed.

  Epilogue

  It’s hard to explain how long it’s taken me to get to the point where I can actually write about this. I’ve held this diary a thousand times, pen in hand, feeling like the simple act of touching it, of holding it, might somehow conjure the past back up. I almost always end up tossing it to the floor or dropping it with a scream, only to pick it back up hours later with a scarf or a pair of gloves, something to keep it from touching me.

  To keep him from coming back.

  I thought he was coming in that night. I was so sure he would smash through the window and grab me, take me away, take me back into that world of snow and fire, of pain and fear.

  But he didn’t. Walker just stood there, tapping his finger, talking in that girlish voice. The pink jacket was burned to him, sticking to his mangled, red-and-black body like a second skin. I could see his dick too, a black, shriveled thing, like a sausage forgotten on a grill, burned to nearly nothing.

  I screamed, and I swear to god, I thought I might never stop, that I might still be there screaming, screaming until my throat bled and I started coughing up blood.

  Maybe I am still screaming.

  A part of me feels that way. It’s that little whisper that I started hearing in that house. Back then, back when I was too young to know the difference, I would have sworn that it was Mary, and in some ways, maybe it was. It felt like…a ghost whispering in my ear. Telling me secrets. Telling me to feel things I shouldn’t feel, to know things I shouldn’t know.

  I realize that it wasn’t a ghost, not literally anyway. It was just some deeper, buried part of myself. A truer part of myself. And it wanted out. It needed out. But now that it is out, that it is with me every second of every day, it has a mind all of its own.

  It’s that voice that tells me how dangerous this book is, how the past won’t be gone forever until I take care of it. There are plenty of times I think this voice is lying to me, trying to convince me that the worst fear inside of me is the truth, that every dream I’ve ever had will wither and die, just like me.

  This isn’t one of those times.

  This diary isn’t magic. It’s just a bundle of old paper and ink, but it does have a bit of power to it. I knew this immediately, once everything was said and done. I should have given it
to the police, but they had all they needed. This book was, in some ways, something I had earned, and though I was afraid of it, I didn’t want to let it go.

  The first thing I did do was to tear out those last pages, the false pages, the wrong pages. This book was Mary’s, and if a part of her spirit or soul was bound up in it, it felt horribly wrong, a desecration even, to let Walker’s words live on in there.

  Oh, Walker.

  That sick son of a bitch.

  I’ve learned a lot about mental health in the years since, most of it firsthand knowledge of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicidal thoughts. Fun things like that. So far, I’ve won those little skirmishes, but every one of them takes a piece of me with it. I feel a bit like a puzzle that’s missing pieces, and I can imagine all too well a world where I don’t win those fights. I hope it never happens, but I’m also not so bold to say it won’t.

  All that is to say, that in some strange way, I sympathize with Walker. He was, quite clearly, a broken man. And, in turn, he broke me as well. I know what that feels like, and so, foolish though it may be, I sympathize.

  But let me make one thing clear. He was a bastard before anything happened. He was simply, a man who broke himself. I did nothing to deserve what happened to me, and that’s why he will forever be a sick son of a bitch.

  Yes, I expected him to kick the glass door to pieces to carry me away, to continue his insane assault on my family. But he didn’t. When I screamed, everyone came running, and by the time my dad opened up the door with a still-greasy butcher knife in his hand, Walker was gone.

  And so, we waited.

  I wanted to be mad at the cops too, but the truth was this entire scene was more than the town was used to. It’s what you would call a prototypical small town. Maybe there were fewer cops than they needed, but then again, no one could have seen that kind of weather happening.

  The news ended up calling that entire week the “Snow of the Century,” something that hadn’t happened this far south in decades. There were only a few four-wheel drives in the police force, and most of them were working wrecks, literally driving injured people to and from the hospital while ambulances skidded all over the road. Apparently, there was even a wreck involving an ambulance that was carrying an elderly lady who had slipped and split her head open when she was getting the mail. The ambulance got rear-ended on a small bridge, and the entire vehicle just slipped off into the water. The EMTs tried to get her out, but she ended up drowning in a frozen creek.