Strings

by Dickson, Allison M.

  That much was true. She was making assumptions. The fact that she was planning to do the very thing that had landed her into all this trouble with the Cassini family to begin with—stealing their money—was also not lost on her, and if she got caught, there would be no mercy this time. They would kill her, flat out. But they wouldn’t get caught. With that kind of money, they could buy a true escape, and the only thing standing in her way was a fuck session with an old lunatic. She did that every day, and she was used to closing off her mind during the act, particularly with the ones who smelled like they hadn’t showered in months. There was a reason most of these men paid for sex.

  “Even if you were right about the girls, and you’re not, we would be taking a huge risk,” Ramón said. “They’ll hunt us until we’re dead. These people don’t stop. Victor Cassini, he never forgets. I’ve been doing this job thirteen years for a reason, and it ain’t because I like the pay.”

  She didn’t know a lot about how Ramón got this job, only that he’d mentioned his “old life” a few times in reference to some bad things he’d done. Like all of them at the Willow, except maybe the Madam and even then Nina couldn’t be completely sure, he was working for the Cassinis under duress. “I understand what you mean,” she said. “You’re stuck in the web just like the rest of us and you’re afraid to try to escape, but we have the upper-hand this time. They expect us to keep doing as we’re told because they’re holding the things we care about for ransom, but that also means we have room to surprise them.”

  Ramón gazed down at the seat for a few minutes, deep in thought. Finally, he sighed and rubbed his face with one gloved hand. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Nina smiled. “Good.”

  “Maybe while you’re in there, I’ll go and get a few things from my place and then come back and wait for you. Is there anything you need from your room?”

  Nina shook her head. The Madam forced her to give up anything sentimental long ago. Another house rule. Her mother’s locket, pictures of her and Joey on their first trip to Atlantic City. All of it went into a box and she had no idea whether the Madam kept these things or burned them. Anything left in her room was property of the Weeping Willow, and the bitch in charge could keep it all for souvenirs as far as Nina was concerned. The purse she carried had a few toiletry items she used for cleaning up after jobs. Wet wipes, toothbrush, deodorant, perfume. She did have a state I.D. at least. No cash, but she was about to solve that little problem. She could buy anything else she needed once they were a good distance away. “Get what you need for yourself, but don’t linger,” she said. “We’ll stock up once we’re on the road.”

  “You sound like you’ve done this before,” he said.

  Nina shrugged. “I’m well-practiced at running away.”

  “I still don’t like the idea of you going in there. I mean, something in there got at them other girls and hurt them bad. If you just run now like I’m saying, you’ll avoid all that.”

  She leaned forward and placed her hand on his arm. “Nothing is going to get to me in there. I promise you.” And yet, the image of Rosie’s dead eyes stuck with Nina, stroking her doubt.

  ***

  About an hour later, Ramón pulled the Town Car up to a rusted iron gate covered in twists of yellowing ivy. The house hunched deep in shadows that even the car’s high-beam headlights couldn’t quite cut through. Nina’s anxiety kicked up a notch.

  Knock it off, she scolded herself. Tree branches arched over the driveway, reminding her of skeletal arms. There weren’t very many leaves on those trees, and it was only mid-September. Still a little too early for them to drop, but then again it didn’t seem like anyone had maintained the estate grounds since the Clinton era. She imagined the proprietor inside might not be much better.

  Ramón pushed aside a few strands of dead ivy and pressed the CALL button. The dusty box didn’t look like it would even work, but a few seconds later, the gate parted with a loud screech, and he guided the car into the inky gloom ahead. The headlights did little to pacify her mounting sense of dread. The vegetation flanking both sides of the narrow and cracked blacktop were all dead or in various stages of dying. Ramón steered around potholes with a well-practiced grace. He slammed on the brakes a moment later, and Nina looked up to see an enormous white possum sitting in front of them. Its pointed snout parted, revealing a mass of needle sharp teeth. Instead of running, it sat up on its hind legs and glared at them with red eyes.

  Wait. Red eyes? She’d seen a lot of possums growing up in the sticks, but never one that was all white or had red eyes. But then she realized it was albino. Rare, but not exactly supernatural. It didn’t look very frightened or interested in running. In fact, it started walking toward them, and Nina cringed as if it might somehow jump through the windshield to get at them.

  “Go!” she yelled. “Hit it if you have to.” She wasn’t sure why a harmless ugly possum terrified her so much. A cold voice spoke up in her head that could only belong to the Madam. How do you know it’s harmless, Nina dear? He looks a little . . . hungry, doesn’t he?

  “I ain’t gonna run it over,” Ramón said. Instead, he tapped on the horn and the thing dropped to its front paws and darted off into a nearby thicket of dead vegetation, trailing its fleshy tail out behind it.

  “See? He ain’t as scary as he looks. Just like me.” He laughed, but it sounded forced. Nina let out a whoosh of breath and sat back in her seat. This whole plan was not getting off to a very promising start if she was jumping at random varmints in the road. Her nerves already felt like the burnt ends of a rope.

  As Ramón steered the car into a circular driveway with a defunct fountain in the center, Nina got a good look at the house in the blue-white wash of moonlight, and her breath caught in the back of her throat. After the creepy stories and the weird possum, this was too much. Maybe they could still turn back. They could find a way to run without the money. Rob a bank, live in homeless shelters. Whatever it took. No amount of money could make her want to go into this place. This mad, mad place.

  The house was in the style of an old Spanish mission, like something one would expect to see in California rather than upstate New York. The color reminded her of dirty old bones, and several cracks marred the stone exterior like black spider webs. But the worst part was the graffiti. Dozens of spray-painted symbols she didn’t recognize, save for the unmistakable pentagram over the door, covered the façade. Thick bars covered the windows, all of which were dark save for one on the far left end of the lower level, which emanated a bluish flicker of light, probably from a television.

  “Dios mio. It gets worse every time,” Ramón murmured.

  Anger popped to life in her gut like a flame. Insensitive jerk. It wasn’t like he was the one who was expected to go in there. “How many girls did you drop off at this nut house over the years, huh? Why are you helping me out now? Conscience getting to you? What exactly is in there? You know, don’t you?” The questions flew out of her mouth like sharp little daggers, and Ramón, in his old black coat and black driver’s cap covering a mop of salt and pepper hair, bowed his head and took it all. Finally, he turned to her with the expression of a hurt dog. Tears brimmed in his dark eyes, and Nina couldn’t help but soften a little. There was no pleasure in stomping a broken man.

  “I got no excuse for what I’ve done, but you have to believe I never wanted to do any of it. I’ve been bringing a couple girls up every year since I started working for the Madam. At first, it wasn’t any big deal. They didn’t seem any different. A lot of them looked forward to the easy money, even if they thought Ballas was a little odd. Far as I know, he didn’t pay as much then either. It’s only in the last eight or nine years that things turned real bad.” He looked out the passenger side window as the house seemed to loom over the car like a hungry monster. “And then, I brought the wrong girl up here. Her name was Angela, and I loved her. And I mean I was in love with her. I would’ve walked barefoot over a pile of nails to be with that girl
, and I think she loved me, too. She was getting older and looking for a new life. Madam gave her the chance to walk free, like you, but she had one last trick. Just one more, and both of us wanted that more than anything, you know? So I . . . I drove her here, knowing by then something was funny about this place, but not wanting to say anything because it would mean she and I couldn’t be together. And I never forgave myself.” His voice cracked on the last word, the tears finally spilling down his face. He brought his hand up to cover his eyes and hissed, like his own tears were burning him. “I never saw her again.”

  “She disappeared?” Nina asked.

  He uncovered his eyes and sniffed. “Oh, she came out. But she was gone in her head, like the others. Muttering under her breath, eyes all blank and dusty. For a long time, I couldn’t understand any of it, but then one day I got my ears up real close to her mouth and I heard it. Daddy needs to eat, daddy needs to eat . . . Over and over again. The other girls would all say different stuff, but similar. Little bits from the freak’s act in there, I suppose.”

  Nina spoke with a dry mouth. “What happened to her after that?”

  “Like all the others, she was shuffling through the house muttering one day and then gone the next. I don’t know where the Madam takes them, though I begged her to tell me and earned a beating within an inch of my life for the trouble. I’d guess some Cassini goon takes ’em out into the woods and offs them and buries them out there.”

  They couldn’t keep sitting in the car. Nina had to make a decision, and the longer she talked about this madness, the less likely she was going to go into that house and face whatever was in there. The only glimmer in the whole mess was the five hundred grand, ripe for the taking. It was a new life. If she walked out of there a little shell-shocked, wouldn’t that be worth it for the chance to be free, to give her mother a new life too so the miserable woman might cheer up a little? She wouldn’t be able to stretch her share of it forever. Eventually, she would have to return to work, but she imagined opening up a little bar on some remote Mexico beach, mixing mojitos and mai tais while wearing a bikini, her skin tanned dark enough to make her look like a native. She would leave all of her pain and mistakes to the vast Pacific. Nothing in this house could be bad enough to scare her away from that dream. Her mother always told her that sometimes the only way out was through. After five years of this life, there wasn’t much “through” left.

  She opened the door before the voices in her head could do any more persuading one way or the other. “We’re still doing this. One last job, and then we’re both home free. Be ready to come get me.”

  Ramón nodded, but the look of stark terror never left his face. “I’ll wait until you wave me on, and then I’ll be here when you come out. God be with you.”

  Nina stepped out of the car and closed the door. After a deep breath, she turned to face the decrepit mansion. Ornate stone planters flanked either side of the door, filled with plants that had long ago crossed the line into compost territory. In one of them, Nina saw something that most certainly wasn’t a plant, and she nearly turned and ran back to the car in defeat. It was a woman’s high-heeled shoe. Red, with the peek-a-boo cutout favored by so many of the girls at the Weeping Willow. Or, rather, by the men who visited the girls. The shoe looked scuffed and shriveled, like it had been there awhile, perhaps left by the last one who visited Ballas in his house of horrors. Maybe it was Rosie’s.

  Nina held firm. She would not run. This wasn’t just about the money, she now realized. It was also about finding out what had happened to the ones who came before her. She would meet the sick freak who lived here, and then she would give him something he wasn’t expecting, like a stiletto heel through the eye. It wasn’t likely anyone would miss the old fucker for a while.

  She walked up the steps, giving the pentagram above the door a cautious glance before pressing the button for the bell. A discordant blare filled the space on the other side of the heavy red wood. Maybe it was the still air or the overall dread running through everything right now, but that atonal chime reminded her a of dying woman’s screams.

  She heard another sound from inside the house. Something was rolling toward her, perhaps on skates of some kind. Then the latch clicked and the door popped open, leaving a small gap. No one welcomed her to come in, but the invitation was evident enough. She put her hand on the old brass knob.

  Not too late to turn back, she thought. Hightail it back to the car now, before Ramón pulls away.

  But she’d made her decision already. Put on your big girl panties and get this thing done. That was her mother’s voice this time, from their last phone conversation when Nina cried and begged to come home. She’d confessed everything: the drugs, stealing from the mob, about being forced into a brothel to pay off her debts. But the woman wouldn’t have her daughter back until it was all a done deed. The unflappable Janie Quick was a hard woman who had about as much pity to spare as the Sahara had water, and she didn’t believe in leaving any job unfinished, no matter how impossible. Nina wondered if she could convince her to run away to Mexico on stolen whore money, but she’d save that challenge for another day.

  Ordinarily, she would have slipped into one of her sultry personas to make the client feel desired, but those theatrics were in another galaxy right now. Standing on the porch with quivering knees, staring at the blackness just inside that cracked door, she swallowed and cleared her throat.

  “I’m Nina, from the Weeping Willow. Hello?”

  She pushed the door open the rest of the way, but there wasn’t anyone there to greet her. Just more darkness tinted with the bluish flickering light from some other part of the house. She couldn’t hear anything, though. Nina turned to the car and waved Ramón on. It felt like a stab in the gut to do so. With a resolute nod of her head she stepped inside. The door, like the mouth of a monster, swung shut behind her with a thundering crack.

  The first thing she noticed, apart from the darkness, was the smell of old urine and filth, so much like the subway trains she and Joey used to ride back in her city-dwelling days. But there was something more here. Something insidious, like the sweet reek of food gone over. At that moment, she was grateful for the darkness, because she didn’t want to see just how bad this place was. Then she thought of roaches, perhaps even rats, and a tickle traced up the back of one leg. She jumped with a yelp, brushing at her calf. It was probably just a random tingle of the skin, but now she was hyper-alert and edging closer toward panic as she brushed at her arms and ran her hands through her hair. Her heart thudded like a trip hammer.

  Stop it! Just stop before you have a panic attack. It’s just a dirty old man living in a nasty old house and nothing more. Probably just gets his kicks putting on a whole haunted house routine for the ladies and scaring the shit out of them on his dime. And speaking of which, where is he?

  “Hello? Is anyone here?” she called out, her voice echoing in the cavernous foyer.

  An orange colored light came on to her left, and she turned to see a tall, square-shouldered silhouette of a man standing in the arched doorway to another room. Nina couldn’t make out any other distinct details, but she could see the skin of his cheek. Something wasn’t right with it, but it was so hard to tell what.

  “Mr. Ballas?” She stepped toward him.

  “Mmmm . . . No. I’m the butler. And you’re a good girl. A very pretty good girl. Is your cunny cunt all wet?” He uttered a low giggle and Nina felt like a thousand tiny worms were crawling on her skin. His jaw was moving as he spoke and laughed, but she was sure there wasn’t any sound coming from his mouth. It was coming from somewhere overhead. Nina thought of a ventriloquist doll and shuddered. Only pitch darkness loomed overhead. The dim orange light had no hope of reaching ceilings so high.

  She did her best to put on the mask she always wore for this job. “Oh, you know it is,” she said, pushing away the quiver wanting to sneak into her voice. She thought she did an admirable enough job, considering the circumstances.


  “Come this way, good girl.” He gestured in the direction he was going, a casual enough thing Nina wouldn’t have ordinarily noticed, but the movement of his arm was odd. She couldn’t figure out why it bothered her until a distant memory popped into her head from when she was eleven or twelve. Her Uncle Richie, who had been a prop maker for a community theater troop, took her to a dress rehearsal for one of his shows, a musical of Pinocchio. She sat next to her uncle on a scaffold above the stage as he and another person secured the rigging attached to the actor who played the puppet. She remembered later watching the show alone in the audience, and how Pinocchio’s limp arms and legs flailed around as he walked and danced. It frightened her so badly she eventually had to cover her eyes. Even though the actor’s face and arms were painted to look like wood, he didn’t look like a puppet. He looked like a reanimated corpse. When she’d told her uncle this after the show, he laughed.

  Yeah, he looks a little creepy, don’t he? But then, the story’s a little creepy too when you think about it. Puppets coming to life sounds like something out of a nightmare.

  Nina agreed then, and she did even more now as she walked deeper into the hell house.

  When the butler turned to lead her, she also realized he wasn’t walking. That explained the sound she’d heard when he answered the door. He rolled as if on some kind of cart. The wheels were creaking with a rapid regularity. He’s a corpse or a dummy propped up on that thing somehow. Someone’s pulling him along and moving his limbs like a puppet.

  She gave her head a hard shake. Not true. Couldn’t be.

  The butler led her through an enormous formal dining room, where dishes and other piles of trash littered a table that was at least twelve feet long. Electric candles brightened things just enough so she could see where she was going, but the butler remained draped in shadow as he rounded the corner into the next passage. Any vestige of hope that he might be a real person drained away as he bumped his shoulder on the edge of the doorway while turning into the hall. He didn’t react, just kept going. Despite the cold terror dripping down Nina’s spine, she felt an insatiable laughter bubbling up from inside her. She cut that off hard. Anything to screw this up now could very well get her killed, she was sure of it.