A Place So Wicked

by Patrick Reuman

  He hurriedly poured the drink, watching it rise until the glass was half full. Then he turned and opened the fridge. It was nearly empty, but alas, within the temple of cooling stood a bottle of apple juice. He pulled it from the fridge and used it to fill his cup the rest of the way.

  Not even waiting until he made it back to his bedroom, he tilted the cup high and let it pour. It coursed down his throat, the fiery liquid burning his insides as it snaked its way toward his stomach. He was surprised at how hard it hit him. He used to be able to down vodka unaltered easily, but now he could feel the burn like someone had forced him to swallow a match. He wondered then exactly how long it had been since he had last drank. It had to have been a few weeks, maybe even a month. The bottle that sat on the counter in front of him was one he purchased quite a while back, far enough back, even, that he couldn’t remember exactly where or when he had gotten it.

  He sealed the bottle and then carried it, and the glass, up the stairs. In his bedroom, he put the bottle back where it belonged, hiding in the closet, and carried the glass over to the window. It was a little cloudy outside, the perfect day for a drink, he thought. Back when he was younger, any day was the perfect day for a drink.

  He was already planning what he would do with the rest of the time he had alone. He would shower, uninterrupted. It was a glorious thought. To be able to bathe without someone knocking on the door, asking him how much longer he would be. In such a large house, it was almost insane that there was only one bathroom. He guessed when the rest of the house was as beautiful as it was, the number of bathrooms was hardly a dealbreaker.

  Then, he would go downstairs and watch some television, also uninterrupted. He wouldn’t have to accept anybody else’s input on what he was going to watch. Not that they did that all that much, what with everyone being busy, but it seemed like everyone sat down at the television, somehow, at the same time as everyone else. He considered what else he may do as he downed the last sip of the apply delicacy, still staring out the back window at nothing in particular.

  He could feel his body swaying just a little bit, an obvious effect of having not drank in so long. He worked to steady himself, wondering if he should really be showering if he were a little tipsy. He decided it would be fine. Their shower had one of those cool handles inside, attached to the wall, to hold yourself up. He didn’t think it was meant for this, but he was glad it was there.

  Brushing his teeth would probably do him well, given that he could smell the alcohol on his own breath. Hiding the alcohol on his breath from his big brother, he laughed to himself, was what his life had come to. He carried the empty glass into the bathroom and rinsed it out before returning it to his bedroom, where he set it on a stand until he could get around to bringing it downstairs later.

  Returning to the bathroom, he closed the door behind him and started removing his clothes. The shower curtain was grey and opaque, something he wasn’t a fan of because, even though it wasn’t fully transparent, it made him uncomfortable with his niece and nephews running around. He locked the bathroom door just in case, even though he was alone, and then cranked on the water, adjusting it slowly to just the right temperature.

  He climbed in, balancing himself with the rail, convinced now beyond a doubt that the little grab bar was a godsend. He washed himself from bottom to top, humming a song as he finished at his hair. The strawberry shampoo left him feeling like he was in some sort of drunken strawberry paradise. He allowed some of it to rain down onto his face, cleansing his skin of the previous night’s sweat.

  As he dunked his head under the water to rinse, he thought he heard a sound. Even in his currently altered state, he knew right away it was the sound of the doorhandle wiggling.

  “Hold on!” he shouted over the shower’s watery roar. “I’ll be out in a minute!”

  Damn, he thought to himself. He couldn’t even manage a fifteen-minute shower without interruption. He was beyond annoyed, not only by the interruption itself but by the fact that whichever kid was trying to break into the bathroom couldn’t even have been bothered to knock. He hurriedly rinsed the soap from his hair and his face.

  The doorhandle continued to rattle. “I said I’ll be out in a second!” He had to stop himself from swearing, but damn did he want to. He started reaching for the towel that hung over the curtain rail.

  A loud thud echoed through the bathroom. He was about to break and scream at whoever was outside the door when he suddenly heard a quiet whimper that went through his ears just as a sharp pain shot through his body. He bent forward a little, not surprised by the pain. He had been feeling sick throughout the night, even worse that morning, but had shrugged it off. Now it was back with a vengeance. He couldn’t be sure if it was the alcohol or Trevor’s sickness that he had been hoping he hadn’t contracted, but the pain disappeared just as quickly as it came, dulling back to the minor ache it had been most of the day. He rose back up, relieved but still mildly upset at the sudden intense pain he had endured.

  The whimpering came again, and for a split second, he thought it was himself, still shaken from wherever the pain had come from.

  “Leave me alone!” he heard, water still in his eyes.

  The voice was Paisley’s or maybe even Trevor’s. After he had a moment to process it, he determined it couldn’t have been either of them. The voice had been too young sounding. The whimpering continued, growing in volume, the sadness behind it becoming more tangible.

  He reached around for the towel that should have been hanging on the shower rod but wasn’t. Desperation growing, he opened his eyes for a second, letting in a little of the soap-tinged water that clung to his face. It burned so they closed involuntarily but not before seeing a dark blur beyond the curtain, the blur in the shape of a small person.

  He pulled the curtain aside just far enough to reach for the towel, having remembered that he left it on the sink. “Who is that?!” he shouted.

  How in the hell did some little kid get into the bathroom? He was naked, for Christ’s sake. As that thought set in, his panic rose even further. What would it look like if everybody suddenly got home? He found the towel and pulled it into the shower, quickly drying his face off.

  This was impossible, whatever was happening. He wasn’t sure if the doors downstairs were locked, but he was damn sure the bathroom door had been locked. He had to be more intoxicated than he had previously thought. Hallucinations like this didn’t come from just a little alcohol. He wasn’t even sure they came with a lot of alcohol. He hadn’t had a trip like this since that one time he tried acid, and he was only seventeen then. He cursed the fact that he had even drank.

  He wrapped the towel around his waist and yanked open the shower curtain. At the door was a little boy, his black hair, green sweatshirt, and blue jeans the only thing visible to Robbie as he faced the other direction. The wiggle sound of the doorknob had stopped only to be replaced by a loud, humming groan, which reverberated off the walls like the whole house was shifting on an axis.

  Robbie blinked, thinking he saw the door itself stretching inward, which was impossible of course, another side-effect of the booze. The boy released his grip on the door handle and suddenly flung backward. No, he didn’t fling backward, he was still on his feet. He had released the handle and started walking in reverse until he reached the tub where he sat down and then pressed his hands up against his eyes and started crying.

  Robbie had leapt to the side, not wanting to be near some kid in his towel. He almost slipped, catching himself on the godsend shower rail. His mind was in a freefall at this point. What had been in his drink? Just vodka and apple juice. He was sure of it. Could the alcohol have gone bad? He was pretty sure that wasn’t even possible. Didn’t most alcohol get better with age, or was that just wine?

  But if there was nothing wrong with the vodka or the apple juice, then how was he hallucinating so heavily?

  He stared down at the boy who hadn’t even noticed Robbie was there yet. But that was because t
he kid wasn’t real, just a part of some weird alcoholic trip. If he got out of this, he swore he would never drink again. He liked being drunk, but he sure as hell didn’t like this.

  The kid suddenly jumped back up like the tub was electrified and started toward the door in a sprint.

  “Wait!” Robbie shouted.

  The kid froze mid-sprint, halfway between the tub and the door. Robbie’s heart was pounding. He didn’t know what he expected when he shouted for him to wait, but it wasn’t for him to stop. The kid had frozen, one leg up in the air behind him, the other planted on the floor, ready to push himself toward the door.

  Robbie had just stepped forward and was nearing the boy’s side to see what was happening when he heard a loud cracking sound. He stopped in his tracks, just out of reach from seeing the boy’s face.

  There was another crack, like something massive was sitting on a bed of ice and the ice could no longer bear the weight, long cracks jolting away from the object in every direction. With the next crack, the kid’s head turned a few inches in the direction of Robbie. There was a pause. Robbie could see little black veins moving across the boy’s otherwise pale white face.

  Another crack shattered the silence, this one insanely loud like a tree had just been struck by lightning and was now toppling to the ground right next to him. With the sound, the boy turned his head the rest of the way, planting his black, empty eyes on Robbie’s. His mouth opened wide, and Robbie saw what his mind could only process as decay. The two black holes planted on the boy’s face remained fixed on Robbie. Robbie couldn’t move, or speak, or even think.

  Then the boy whispered, the sound coming from the pit that Robbie knew was supposed to be a mouth even though it hardly resembled such a thing.

  “Help me.”

  17

  Robbie returned to consciousness to the sound of commotion downstairs. It started as nothing but a muffle, like something that was taking place on a distant television or outside the house, but quickly focused into actual voices and words of which he recognized in a panic as Richard and Lisa. When he opened his eyes, Robbie found himself on the bathroom floor. What he had been doing there, he wasn’t sure yet. He couldn’t recall.

  As soon as the mental haze cleared, he jumped to his feet. Everything came rushing back at once. He had seen a little boy. He had been in the shower. He had also been drinking. His mind fought to place the events in proper order, his mind still a drunken puzzle, some of the pieces apparently missing from the box.

  He had been dumb enough to climb into the shower after drinking, and after knowing full-well that he was, at the very least, a little out of it. He scoured his body for bumps, pain, or any other sign of a fall. Other than the pain in his stomach and a general soreness, he seemed to be just fine. The boy, the one he had seen, or thought he had seen, was gone, had been nothing but a figment of his imagination brought on by the drink, or maybe even a fall. Just because he didn’t have a bruise didn’t mean he hadn’t fallen or passed out. After all, he had woken on the floor, and he had to have gotten there somehow. Maybe that one glass had been plenty enough to knock him on his ass after having gone so long without a drop.

  Perhaps then, the boy was just a dream, a very vivid one brought on by the guilt he felt for drinking in Richard’s house, an act he knew would upset Richard. That was it. It was final. He wasn’t going to drink anymore. When he got a minute, and the coast was clear, he would dump his bottle down the bathroom sink and dispose of the glass casing, ridding himself of the guilt and the evidence.

  The bigger mystery was not the boy but how he could be hungover so quickly. He could hear Richard and the others getting sorted downstairs, likely just having got home from the doctor’s office. He guessed the appointment probably took an hour or so, no longer. So why was he already feeling like such shit? You weren’t supposed to feel like that until the morning after, and even then, you had to have gotten really slammed to suffer those morning pains.

  After getting dressed, he pulled the bathroom door open and stepped out into the hall. He felt a chill, like the air conditioning had been on and blasting the whole time he was out except they didn’t have air conditioning, not yet, not this time of the year. He felt his body release an involuntary shiver.

  His mouth had a horrible taste in it. He turned around quickly, remembering that he hadn’t brushed his teeth yet. He did so in a rush, trying to get out of the bathroom before anybody came upstairs. He swirled water in his mouth and then spit it out.

  As he lifted his head from the sink, he startled at the reflection in the mirror. What he saw was horrifying. It was only him, of course, his face looking back from the reflective glass, but how he looked didn’t seem right. He looked…different, like he had been on a week-long binger and was just now coming up for air. But he hadn’t. The pain in his stomach twisted. He bent forward but was taken off guard by the sudden wobble in his knees and almost lost his balance.

  He held tightly to the sink, afraid if he let go he would find himself right back on the floor. He took in a deep breath, demanding that he and his body both snap the hell out of it. He returned the toothbrush and toothpaste to where they belonged and reentered the hall, using the wall as support.

  He steadied himself, now able to stand erect, the bathroom behind him. Perhaps all he needed was time, a minute to gather himself. He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the cool touch of the still-damp strands, cooling further in the ice of the upstairs hall. Once he felt truly ready, he headed downstairs to join the others.

  As Robbie reached the bottom of the stairs, Lisa called out to him. “Robbie, did anybody stop by while we were gone?”

  Robbie thought it a strange question. Who would be coming by? “No, not that I know of. I was upstairs most of the time, and then in the shower.”

  He entered the kitchen where Lisa and Richard stood at the center counter table looking down at what looked like some sort of wrapped-up dish. He noticed there was another dish behind them, on the counter by the sink. He hadn’t noticed it when he had come down for the glass, but now that he thought about it, digging into the peripherals of his mind, he thought he did remember seeing it there, just not registering it at the time.

  “It’s the second one today,” Lisa said to Richard, not quite angry but definitely taken aback. “I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

  “People, I assume,” Richard half-joked.

  “Honey, I don’t think it’s funny. It’s creepy.”

  Richard pushed back his smile, trying to be serious. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s probably just the neighbors. They probably knocked but saw we weren’t home so they just left it on the steps.”

  “Someone left one earlier as well, but they didn’t even knock. I heard them outside, and when I went out to check, all I found was this.” She turned and pointed at the dish by the sink.

  “Hmmm.” Richard looked at it quizzically.

  Robbie stared at them, partly interested in what they were talking about but mostly counting down the seconds until he could go back upstairs. He wasn’t even sure why he had come down in the first place. The pain in his stomach, and everywhere else, seemed to be growing by the second. And on top of that, the smell down there on the first floor was only getting worse. He imagined for a second how it might smell in the basement right then and nearly gagged.

  “Maybe you should just go next door and ask them if they left one of these,” Richard said.

  Lisa nodded. “Yeah. Maybe that’s a good idea.”

  “Well, I’ll be upstairs if anybody needs me. I think I got whatever Trevor has because I feel like complete shit,” Robbie said, holding his lower belly like his stomach was going to fall out.

  Richard glanced over, looking Robbie up and down. “No offense, but you look like shit, too.”

  Robbie started to laugh, but it hurt so he stopped. “Good luck with your investigation, Lisa.” Robbie tried to smile as he turned around and started back up the stairs.

  Just
as Lisa started toward the door, the handle turned and Paisley walked in. She stopped and smiled when she saw her mom and dad staring at her. “I was at the park,” she said, reflexively, in defense of her having left earlier without saying anything.

  Lisa walked up beside her and started putting her shoes back on. “Did you have fun?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I suppose. I met a kid there. Turns out there is life on this planet.”

  Lisa didn’t understand the comment but didn’t understand half the things her kids said, so she didn’t ask. “I’m heading next door really quick.”

  Paisley smiled, noticing Trevor sitting on the couch.

  “Hey, Paisley,” he said.

  “Out of bed, huh? Feeling better?”

  “A little.”

  But he was smiling, which was more than she had seen him do lately.

  “Yeah,” Lisa said. “He waited until we got to the doctor’s office to decide to feel better.”

  “Doctor’s office?” Paisley said.

  “I had a surprise appointment today!” Trevor said.

  “That’s fun.”

  Lisa opened the door, letting in a small gust of damp air.

  “You’re going next door, you said?” Paisley asked.

  “Yeah, just for a minute.”

  Paisley looked toward Trevor. “You wanna go with her?”

  “He’s actually supposed to be heading back to bed for rest,” Richard said, joining in the conversation as he entered the doorway.

  “I’d love to,” Trevor said. “I’ve done a ton of resting already. Some fresh air would be nice.”

  “Fine,” Lisa said. “But hurry and get your shoes on. It looks like it’s going to rain in a minute.”

  Trevor hopped up with new agility and quickly pulled on his shoes. The two of them followed their mom out the door, their dad staying behind. Neither of them had asked exactly why they were going next door. Paisley didn’t really care. She was just glad Trevor was looking less deathly. And Trevor, well, he was just happy to be feeling better. His main motivation, which he wasn’t going to mention to his mom, and definitely not his sister, was just to get away, because the moment he had taken a seat on the couch, a new queasiness had come over him. When his sister asked him about going outside, his entire body immediately recalled the relief he had felt when they left for the doctor’s office, the cool air against his skin, blowing through his short hair. He wanted that again. No…he needed it. His body craved it.