huwujiu

[huwujiu]

The Beggar

Word Count: 4.6 K

Sanjay hated India. He was Indian by birth, but had lived in the United States since the age of five and was an American citizen. He had become a wealthy entrepreneur in northern New Jersey, owner of a dozen apartment buildings, a chain of coffee shops, and two hotels. Although Hindi had been spoken in his home, he refused to speak it after the age of eight or so, and had long since forced every word of the language from his memory. He was proud to speak American English, not the clownish dialect of the Subcontinent that Western comedians loved to ridicule.

  Although his parents were both reasonably devout Hindus, Sanjay was not. He regarded a religion that worshipped elephant-headed gods and phallic symbols an embarrassment to civilization, and permitted no Hindu images in his own house. Neither were Bollywood films, cricket matches, or curry welcome in Sanjay’s family. He ate like a Westerner and enjoyed Western forms of entertainment, and made his family do likewise. His wife, a fellow business major he had met at Penn, was of a respectable lineage of Brahmins – of the Boston, not the Indian, variety. Sanjay’s two high-achieving children had never been to India nor met any of his distant relatives still living there. He had no desire to subject any of them to the cultural pressures that his Indian family members would exert – to go back to India to marry a proper Indian woman, to consult an astrologer in order to determine a career track, and so forth. His son was a high school track star and his daughter had made the honor roll every single semester since starting Middle School.

And now Sanjay was back in India, sans family, for the first time since he had boarded that flight to New York with his parents almost forty years earlier. A major international conference of hoteliers in Delhi had finally drawn him back, although it was his wife who had persuaded him to go. Such conferences often afforded opportunities for networking, and even Sanjay had to admit that many of the most successful hotel managers in the United States were Indian. But he notified none of his relatives in India of his visit, and vowed not to leave the opulent, air-conditioned confines of the Oberoi Hotel in what passed for a swank neighborhood of Delhi. Though it had been four decades ago, he still remembered the smells, the noise, the chaos, and above all the heat and humidity of India, and he had no desire to experience any of them again. Sanjay was also mortally afraid of diseases, and knew that the streets of India’s cities literally teemed with filthy beggars carrying all kinds of contagious pathogens. So while most of the other foreigners at the conference took advantage of downtime to tour the city, Sanjay locked himself in his room watching CNN and BBC – the only Western channels available – and running his businesses via the Internet.

But on the next-to-last day of the conference, the featured speaker – along with the breakout sessions and workshops based on his presentation – were all cancelled unexpectedly when the speaker came down with dengue fever. To compensate, the conference organizers announced an all-expenses-paid day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Five state-of-the-art air-conditioned buses had been chartered, and competent tour guides were retained to ensure a thoroughly sanitized experience. And Sanjay, who had not left the hotel for six days, decided reluctantly to go along. The Taj Mahal, after all, was one of the few things India could justifiably take pride in (he thought). As long as his exposure to the streets of India was kept at an absolute minimum, he was willing to risk the trip. Besides, several friends he had made at the conference, whom he was cultivating for possible future dealings, were taking the trip, and he had no desire to be the only foreigner at the conference who missed the chance to see the world’s most beautiful building.

His newfound colleagues chattered happily as the huge bus cut its way through Delhi’s tangles of traffic. From his window, Sanjay could see what he regarded as India’s human refuse: beggars (many of them deformed), unkempt autorickshaw drivers, untouchables sweeping sidewalks and gutters, street urchins, homeless men defecating in public, and mangy street dogs living off the mounds of garbage that filled every vacant lot. Even through the tinted window-glass, from within the deliciously air-conditioned confines of the bus, Sanjay felt that old revulsion. How could so many hundreds of millions of people be content to live like this, choking on one another’s exhaust fumes and sewer odors? Even on the highway, the traffic was unspeakably clotted, with horns blaring and the tiny Bajaj autorickshaws weaving amongst the larger vehicles, holding up everyone else. As the miles went past, Sanjay began to doubt the wisdom of coming on this trip.

Hours later, the buses pulled up not far from the Taj Mahal, along a broad, thoroughly Indian avenue that somehow always got cropped out of the promotional photographs of the place. Sanjay saw with horror that they would indeed have to walk several blocks through Agra’s crowded streets to get to the grounds of the Taj itself – several blocks of heat, exhaust, obnoxious touts, and revolting beggars. He considered staying in the bus, until the driver shut off the engine and the outside heat began to creep in through the vents and open door. With extreme reluctance, Sanjay got off the bus with everyone else, where the late morning heat and humidity hit him like a physical wave. He felt his pores open wide and begin spurting sweat down his back and chest. The near-tropical sun rays caused his scalp to prickle. And his composure began to fray amid the insistent clamor of dozens of touts and hawkers, who had descended on the bus the moment it stopped.

The guides, who spoke impeccable English, began their spiel about the history of the Taj Mahal, whose white minarets loomed over the scorching chaos of Agra like pristine mountain peaks. They walked towards the gleaming towers, threading their way past hundreds of vendors with their goods spread out on dusty blankets or crammed into makeshift wooden stalls amid drifts of discarded juice cartons and banana peels.

And there were beggars, of course. Dirty-faced urchins clamoring for rupees and pencils. Women dressed in rags, clutching infants against pancake-flat breasts. Victims of hideous birth defects and crippling diseases, displaying their monstrous deformities in hopes of eliciting greater sympathy from well-heeled tourists. Sanjay felt sick, unwilling and unable to give money to any of them, knowing that if he did, he would instantly be mobbed by others, as many of his more naïve traveling companions were finding out. Also, Sanjay had no desire to come into direct physical contact with anyone who could possibly transfer to him some hideous disease. All of which, he told himself, was more than enough reason to keep his distance and give to no one.

  But inwardly, his Western-cultivated conscience nagged. He was rich and successful, having enjoyed opportunities these wretched souls could never begin to comprehend.

Suddenly he noticed, seated apart from the others under a small peepul tree, a sadhu dressed in a dirty orange dhoti. His hair was tangled and filthy, and his torso emaciated. He had gotten this way, Sanjay reflected, by having renounced family, job, and friends and adopting the mendicant lifestyle of a Hindu holy man, as ordinary Indian professionals sometimes inexplicably did.

He gaped at the man’s legs, or what was left of them. All of his toes were gone, and what remained of one of his feet was horribly eaten away. Several fingers were missing also, and unsightly sores covered his legs and arms. The man was suffering from an advanced case of leprosy. Sanjay knew that leprosy first robbed the body’s extremities of the ability to feel pain, resulting in fingers and toes worn away by unwitting self-abuse. In places like India, rats often accelerated the process, chewing away at unresponsive leprous limbs while their owners slept.

Sanjay noticed that the brass tray on the ground in front of the leprous holy man had more than the usual scattering of coins. Most Hindus were especially likely to give to beggars with an aura of piety, to bolster their own karma. Sanjay’s gaze lingered on the sadhu a split second too long. The man had noticed Sanjay and was looking directly at him with coal-black eyes. Sanjay wanted to look away, but the man’s eyes held him, imploring. The beggar spoke no words, but Sanjay knew what he was thinking: Come here, rich man, son of India. Open your pockets, buy me another few days of sustenance. You whom the gods have blessed, share your substance with a brother.

Involuntarily, Sanjay put his hand in his pocket and took hold of a crisp 1000-rupee bill. He took a half-step forward before a wave of revulsion stopped him short. He let go of the bill and withdrew his hand from his pocket. Glaring at the beggar, he shook his head and stepped back. The man’s face fell, and turned to look at another passerby, who tossed a ten-rupee coin on the tray.

Sanjay hurried forward to keep up with his group, still feeling sick. For some reason, he was no longer able to hear what the guide was saying. The hubbub of traffic and teeming humanity, in combination with the burning sun, was overwhelming his senses.

“Hey, sar, you, come here!”

Too exhausted to resist the wiles of yet another tout, Sanjay turned toward the voice. A small, slender Indian with eyes that seemed a bit too narrow was gesturing at him.

“You too hot. Come inside! Have cool drinks and A/C!”

Sanjay’s eyes followed the man’s pointing finger. Over the entrance to what looked like a very dark little restaurant, a grimy sign in Hindi and English advertised “cool drings” and A/C. Gratefully, Sanjay made his way into the establishment, which proved to be as deliciously dark and cool inside as the sign promised.

The man pointed at a table. This time of day, there were no other customers, which suited Sanjay just fine. He sat down, and the man brought him an ice-cold bottle of Mirinda. As he drank gratefully, enjoying the too-sweet liquid sloshing down his parched throat, he noticed several other men, who evidently worked behind the counter, watching him closely with smiles that made him a bit uneasy. But he finished the bottle and leaned back, savoring the stream of cold air pouring out of the A/C unit directly above his head. He thought about the cool, dry airplane he would be boarding the following day that would take him back to civilization, and felt his eyelids drooping irresistibly.

Many hours later, Sanjay awoke. He had fallen asleep somehow, but he did not remember dreaming. It had been more like oblivion, and for a moment, he was unsure who he was. Then memory returned. He remembered the cool drink inside the air-conditioned shop, the men watching him….

  Sanjay groaned. He felt the thick, humid Indian air and smelled the awful smell of offal. He opened his eyes weakly, his head throbbing, and saw that it was dark out. He was lying on his belly on some rough surface, and in his limited field of vision he could make out what looked like a pile of garbage inches from his face.

He tried to move, but his limbs felt numb, doubtless an after-effect of whatever drug they’d given him. Then he felt something touch his back, and heard a strange voice humming what sounded like a mantra in Hindi.

Appalled, Sanjay struggled to move, and managed to roll partially over, realizing as he did so that he was completely naked and covered in dirt. In a panic, he rolled again, over onto his back and what felt like more refuse, some of which oozed pulpily against his bare skin. He shuddered, partly at the garbage and partly at the vision of someone kneeling over him, someone gaunt, with lank, tangled hair, who held a small round object in one hand. In the background, an orange streetlamp glowed, giving enough light for him to see that he was lying in an alley amid piles of garbage.

The figure kneeling over him straightened slightly, allowing the light from the lamp to reveal his features. Sanjay shuddered. It was the leprous sadhu. The man smiled at him and, reaching out with a clawlike hand with only three remaining fingers, daubed some kind of ointment on his chest.

Sanjay tried to scream, but only a gurgle came out. He shook his head, but the hand continued to apply ointment, doubtless some kind of horrid ayurvedic concoction.

  Exerting all his strength, Sanjay convulsed his body, jerking his head backwards and moving his arms for the first time. In his effort to get away from his ghastly caregiver, his head knocked into a pile of garbage, causing it to cascade onto his face. Since his mouth was open attempting to scream, some of it fell into his mouth, including some unmentionable piece of discarded meat that seemed to have things wriggling in it.

Choking and retching on the refuse, Sanjay tried to sit up, spitting out the foulness as best he could.

  Finally, he managed to croak at the sadhu in Hindi that he thought he had forgotten, “Door jao! Go away!”

The man withdrew his hand, and Sanjay managed finally to sit up, still spitting. With one hand, he waved angrily at the sadhu. “Door jao! Mujhe akela chhod do! Leave me alone!”

The man stood up, his expression unreadable, and slowly backed away. When Sanjay gestured again, the sadhu turned and limped painfully up the alley, disappearing around a corner.

With the sadhu gone, Sanjay was able to focus on his predicament. He was stark naked and covered in garbage, and his mouth was full of the foul taste of unmentionable filth. Not only that: his back and chest were covered with ointment that the sadhu had applied with his leprous hands.

Sanjay stumbled to his feet, dizzy from the smell of garbage and the after-effects of the drug. He looked frantically around for his clothes, but everything was gone. His clothes, cards, money, passport, everything had disappeared. He groaned in despair and sank to his knees, fully aware of his predicament. The buses had long since left without him, and no one knew or cared where he was. He was covered in filth, looked and stank like some street person, and didn’t have a stitch of clothing on him. He, Sanjay the man of means, was in serious trouble.

Suddenly he noticed a dhoti lying beside him on a comparatively clean patch of ground. It was old and frayed, but folded neatly. He realized that the sadhu must have left it for him. Gritting his teeth, he girded himself with that most Indian piece of clothing, and stumbled down the alley towards the orange streetlight, still gagging.

Emerging from the narrow cul-de-sac, Sanjay realized he was no longer on any familiar street. In the humid, clouded dark he could make out no landmarks. He knew the Taj Mahal could not be far off, but in which direction? The dimly-lit street wound past mostly silent padlocked storefronts and grubby concession stands, now all but abandoned except for a few scrawny stray cats and – something else. Sanjay could not see any other human beings aside from a bearded man sleeping on a piece of cardboard across the street, but he could see constant, furtive movements in the dark corners and interstices all around him. He caught a brief glimpse of baleful red eyes and a narrow, whiskered snout that whisked back into the darkness as he turned to look. Rats! Sanjay felt a shaft of terror. There were rats all around, larger and far more aggressive than the feral cats, prowling fearlessly in search of anything – anything – to consume. Some of these monstrous rodents might have been snacking on the fingers and toes of the leprous sadhu, he realized. Or perhaps they had grown fat and predatory on some abandoned waif too small to fend them off and too slow to outrun them. As it was, they had already apparently sensed that he was no threat, and had begun emerging from the shadows, some to forage without regard for Sanjay’s presence, and some simply to perch atop the refuse and stare at him.

Got to find help, Sanjay thought. He had no money, no clothes, no identification, no food, and no water – and no way to obtain any of these unless he could locate and convince some good Samaritan to help him. The nearest United States government office was hours away, back in New Delhi, and he doubted that the local police would be willing to help. But he had to try. He turned and stumbled painfully forward, and the rats followed. He heard the obscene rustle of dozens of tiny claws and scaly tails as he willed his legs, suddenly and inexplicably racked with shooting pain, to propel his filthy, exhausted body up the street. Each step he took produced agonizing pain from the soles of his feet to his thighs, and he wondered in his terror whether the knockout drug he had been given was responsible.

  Unable to support his weight, he leaned against a dusty, shuttered shopfront, willing his legs not to buckle. The rats chittered triumphantly, and he felt several furry bodies brush against his ankles.

  “Get away! Back off!” Sanjay was shocked at how weak his voice sounded, and how ineffectual his flailing arms were. The rats were all around him, their eyes glittering red in the dim light. Some of them were nearly the size of woodchucks, and they all clearly sensed that Sanjay was no threat. There were at least thirty of the bristling brutes now, some of them sitting up on their haunches, watching and waiting.

  Sanjay turned, still leaning against the wall, and resumed his slow, lurching progress. The pain in his feet and legs, he noticed, was giving way to a strange numbness that made him feel as if his feet were no longer attached, and that each step was into a sort of bottomless liquid. There was no reassuring contact of sole upon stone or hardpan, no contraction of muscle and tendon propelling his body weight forward.

  There was, momentarily, an odd tickling sensation somewhere near where his right ankle used to be. Glancing down, Sanjay saw two rats gnawing at his lower leg, just above where the Achilles tendon was anchored. He saw spurting blood – his own – followed by a surge of furry bodies drawn to the smell. Sanjay screamed in horror and lashed out with his other foot, kicking savagely at the rats, which withdrew a few paces, squeaking and hissing threateningly. Why can’t I feel any pain? What is happening to me?

Sanjay looked around desperately for anything that might fend off the ravenous little beasts, and noticed a street-sweeper’s handmade broom leaning against a dirty garbage cart. As it was the property of someone of very low caste, it was unlikely that any of the local merchants or other residents of this particular street would touch it. Sanjay, however, was long past caring about such niceties. With a clumsy sweeping grab, he snatched the broom and began smacking the street threateningly. The rats knew better than to come within reach. They withdrew a few meters, but they did not abandon the chase. And there were more coming, dozens more, swift dark shadows converging down the street from both directions.

“Help!” Sanjay began calling desperately in English, his mostly forgotten childhood Hindi no longer adequate to the purpose.

  A few paces ahead of him, he saw a stirring in a dark doorway. A slender arm flashed into view, beckoning wildly at him. Sanjay wobbled forward, no longer caring if he was being lured into a den of thieves. Slender gray fingers grabbed his hand and pulled him through the dark doorway, and a heavy door banged shut, cutting off the awful whisper of rat’s feet. Sanjay thought he could hear some of the little brutes scrabbling at the door, trying to dig underneath or gnaw through. But the wood was thick. It might just be the blood vessels hammering in his ears.

He turned to his rescuer. It was the sadhu, holding the dirty stub of a candle and staring at him with something like pity. And there was something else in those dark eyes, perhaps a bit of fatalistic satisfaction.

“Thank you,” Sanjay said unsteadily. “Dhanyavaad.”

The beggar raised his hands and pressed the leathery palms together, along with what remained of his fingers, but said nothing. He turned silently and headed off down a narrow dark passageway, and Sanjay had little choice but to follow.

  His legs and feet completely insensate and feeling detached, Sanjay stumbled heedlessly after the beggar, sensing that upon him alone his survival now depended. He heard rather than felt a sickening crunch underfoot. Looking down, he saw that he had trodden on an empty bottle that had shattered underneath his lacerated bare foot, one of the razor shards slashing his right big toe almost to the bone. The toe gushed blood over the damp floor, but no sensation of pain was forthcoming. With a moan, Sanjay hurried forward behind the shrinking light of the beggar’s candle.

They came to another door, which looked to be of very ancient workmanship, probably from long before the Raj. Sanjay knew little of Indian history, but he had read somewhere that, before the British came, the Moguls had been masters of India. They had built the Taj Mahal and, by all appearances, the massive bronze door in front of them as well, which was covered with what looked like Persian writing.

The beggar pulled on a tasseled rope, and from somewhere within, a bell bonged dully. The door swung open, pulled by two men in turbans. Seeing their open sores and missing digits, Sanjay realized that they, too, were leprous. The sadhu walked through the door without looking back, seemingly indifferent to whether Sanjay followed or not. The two door attendants waited impassively. Sanjay looked over his shoulder at the inky black tunnel behind him and thought of the rats. Beyond the door, he could hear the murmur of voices and see light from a few dim electric bulbs.

Squaring his shoulders, and trying to ignore the pitiful condition of his feet and legs, he walked through the door as steadily as he could. Trying to ignore the heavy sound of the door closing behind him, Sanjay looked around at the people inside.

He was in a dilapidated hall of some kind, its vaulted stone ceiling supported by crumbling pillars. The odor of decay and filth was overpowering. The beggar – his beggar – was facing him, and dozens of others like him were spread across the dirty tiled floor, staring silently at the newcomer. They were young and old, men and women, some dressed in the saffron garb of sadhus, others in filthy, threadbare rags. All were gaunt and undernourished. And every single one was visibly leprous.

Sanjay recoiled at the sight of oozing sores and missing fingers and toes. The floor on which his bare feet stood – the feet he could no longer feel – was doubtless covered with whatever nightmare pathogen was responsible for their condition. He tried to back away, but felt his legs buckle beneath him. He fell backwards, flailing helplessly, his head smacking the floor hard. He blacked out for the second time.

Sanjay came to almost immediately, jarred back into nightmare awareness by the touch of many hands and the jabber of whispering voices speaking Hindi. Or was it Hindi? The throbbing in his head seemed to have distorted the sounds, but he recognized none of the more or less familiar cadences of his long-neglected native tongue. In his addled condition, the whispering sounded like demented, incomprehensible gibberish.

He opened his eyes and struggled to sit up, feeling the filth on the floor peel off his bare back. All around him a ring of intense, lean faces studded with gumdrop-black eyes drew back, and the whispering subsided. His head was full of pain, but his legs and arms seemed to float on air, bereft of all sensation. Sanjay looked in the direction that he knew his legs must be, and screamed. Though the cut toe had stopped bleeding, it still hung at a crooked angle, clotted with gore. Two more toes had turned a deep purple color, and his feet and lower legs had also turned patchily purple, with several open breaks in the skin oozing blood and pus. Somehow, he realized with a sudden, fierce certainty, leprosy had invaded his body. With inexplicable speed, it had deadened the nerves in his feet, legs, and hands, rendering his limbs helpless against the merciless forces that tore, abraded, cut, and severed. He was no longer, he grasped numbly, Sanjay the prosperous American businessman, proud husband and father of four high-achieving children. He was a nameless, destitute leper among his own kind.

He felt a warmth on his chest, and saw that someone – possibly his beggar, who sat closest to him, staring intently into his eyes – had rubbed more of the foul-smelling ointment on him. Touching his forehead, his hand came away grayish-white; he had been doused with vibhuti, the sacred ash.

Why? Why me? The despairing thoughts crowded into his throbbing head. From somewhere outside his head came thoughts from some Other. He felt the powerful will of the sadhu, his sadhu, contending with his own, vigorous and in deadly earnest, despite the man’s ravaged body. Why not you, son of India? Do you believe yourself apart from us? It is our blood in your veins, the tainted blood of ten million lepers, the most wretched of all, the refuse upon which your world has been built. Why not you, and all your family, and all of your friends and colleagues, those with whom you have gotten rich and enjoyed the fatness of the earth, while we suffer in darkness?

To this Sanjay had no reply. He moaned and tried again to stand, but it was no use. The ring of feral faces around him pressed closer, the eyes darkening and features seeming to narrow in the dim light. The whispering began again. They were human rats, nothing more, Sanjay thought. Like foul vermin they lived in hidden places, scavenging from the living to prolong the living death that their disease had visited upon them. They were the foul night soil beneath every street, plaza, highway, and building, the raw face of vicious, untamed, predatory nature that even a hundred generations of progress had not wholly eradicated.

The faces around him seemed to swim and coalesce, shrinking and darkening, and the soft whispering rose in pitch. Dark eyes focused on Sanjay’s unprotected legs and feet, and shriveled hands reached out eagerly, pawing at his flesh. Yet they were not hands but tiny claws, Sanjay realized, and the faces behind them were no longer recognizably human. He saw blunt gray snouts and broken whiskers where noses and cheeks had been, and dirty gray fur in the place of dhotis and tee shirts.

  Sanjay shrieked and tried to crabwalk away from the chittering mob, but he found his retreat blocked by a column. Then they were upon him, pressing his torso to the floor for the final time, swarming over his legs and arms. His last coherent impression was of the vaulted, skylike ceiling above him, not heaven but the covering of what was to be his tomb.

And then the chewing started.

[huwujiu]

The Rolang

Word Count: 6.3 K

“I wonder if Felix’s ever coming back,” said Lucy. “We can’t keep storing all his junk forever.”

Privately, I doubted that Felix ever would but, being preoccupied with the Scrabble board in front of me, I said nothing.

“You’re just afraid he’ll insist on taking back his room and throw you and Meg out on the street,” Matt observed, scanning his letter tiles in vain. “Why do we even play this game? All I ever get are vowels.”

“Because we’re a bunch of over-educated Ivy Leaguers obsessed with dead poets,” Lucy replied.

“You gotta have a vocabulary of more than a thousand words to win at Scrabble, Matt,” Tony pointed out, drawing chuckles from the others. “You shoulda studied Latin like the rest of us.”

As usual, Tony was watching, not playing. He glanced over at Lucy, who, as usual, was sitting on her favorite stool with her shoulders hunched. It was her concentration posture. “Not to worry, Luce, Felix is not coming back.”

“You can’t know that,” Irene said, her almost albino-white skin looking paler than usual in the soft glow of the spider lamp hanging over the large wooden table. “He said he would be back, and not to throw away his things or anything.”

“He said, but he’s been gone nearly six months, to where was it? Nepal, wasn’t it?” Lucy stirred the remnants of coffee in her cup.

“Tibet, this time,” Irene corrected. “He’s already been to Nepal twice, and spent a couple years in India besides.”

“Why in the world does he spend so much time in places like that?” Matt wondered aloud. “Nothing but poor people and lots of diseases. Why can’t he be into Medieval or English Lit, like any normal person?”

“He’s been seeking wisdom,” said Irene, without a trace of irony. “Enlightened people have doing that in the East for millenia.” When Matt rolled his eyes and grinned at Tony, she added in an exasperated tone, “Some people think there’s more to life than beer and women, Matt. Felix knows more languages than the rest of us put together.”

“So what?” Matt snorted. “He’s missing out on the best things in life to poke around musty monasteries. And don’t knock beer till you’ve tried it.”

“Typical,” sniffed Irene. “Ladies and gentlemen, Matt’s attitude is why this whole rotten Western civilization of ours is such a mess. Everybody thinking about number one, nobody ever asking the important questions, all materialism, no spirituality--”

“Spirituality, hell,” Matt said. “Didn’t you hear that message on the answering machine last week? The dumb jerk’s gotten kicked out of his graduate program at Penn. Felix forget to tell anyone at school he was taking a few months off.”

Irene waved dismissively. “He has higher priorities. I wouldn’t expect you to understand the word ‘enlightenment’.”

Lucy spoke up again. “Irene, we all know you admire him and tried learning some dead language from him – sam-… sank-… What was it?”

“Sanskrit,” Irene informed her. “Hardest thing I ever did, but he’d mastered it. Also Pali and Punjabi and Tibetan and I’m not sure how many others. He’s like a modern-day Richard Burton.”

“You mean the actor?” Tony was looking genuinely puzzled.

“The explorer and adventurer,” Irene said.

“Yeah, wasn’t he kind of kinky, researching Oriental sexuality, that kind of thing?” Matt was suddenly interested.

“Yes,” Irene said, “but he was also a real pioneer and managed to learn about all kinds of secret cults and other stuff that no other Westerner had ever learned about.”

“Somehow,” Matt said, “I can’t picture Felix going all tantric. The guy’s a marble statue, I’m pretty sure. Took him out drinking one time, or tried to. Tried to get him to pick up some girl who was totally hitting on him, and he wasn’t interested.”

“Felix has better things to do than go to bars,” Irene said.

“Whatever.” Lucy waved dismissively. “I’m sure it’s all very interesting, but didn’t you think he was a little creepy? I mean, he used to burn incense in his room in front of that horrible statue --”

I knew what she was talking about. I used to smell the incense from my room down the hall, sometimes late at night. And there was the bell-ringing and incessant chanting --.

“It’s just a Yab-yum,” Irene said. “A fertility symbol older than any Western religion.”

“Oh, is that what it is?” Matt winked at Tony. “I got a calendar in my room with a few of those.”

Irene colored slightly. “I’m sorry. I thought I was talking to grownups.”

“I don’t care what it’s called,” Lucy said. “It gave me the creeps. And all those languages – how’s he gonna make a living reciting Buddhist prayers?”

“There!” Matt said triumphantly, laying three tiles on the board. We all looked. Matt had played ‘and’ for a whopping four points.

“It’s about time,” said Irene, reaching for her tiles. “I just happen to have--”

But what Irene had remained forever unknown, because the doorbell rang suddenly, followed by a barrage of knocking.

“Who the hell--?” Matt started for the door.

“Don’t answer it, Matt. Could be some kinda nut, at this hour.” Lucy moved closer to Tony, who was the largest resident of our house.

“I’ll go check it out. You guys stay put.” I stood up, relieved for a break in the game and the conversation. I winked at Matt. “You hear a sudden scream, followed by a choking noise, just jump out the window.”

“Into that rain? No thanks, I’d rather get carved up by a psycho,” Matt said loudly.

“Will you two quit it, please? Doug, either check the door or turn out the lights.” Irene looked merely irritated, as usual, but Lucy looked nervous.

I went to the dining room door just as the knocking resumed. I pulled the door open, letting in a gust of wind and rain.

On the threshold stood a pitiful figure in a soaked poncho, carrying a muddy backpack. It was Felix.

“Felix! Come on in! We were just talking about you! I never expected to see you again, to tell the truth. Figured you’d taken up permanent residence in some monastery.” I ushered him inside, and draped his dripping poncho over a dining room chair.

Felix looked a lot thinner than the last time I had seen him, and his jet black hair was plastered over temples that did not appear to have seen the light of day for some time. His red eyes betrayed a lack of sleep, and his clothing looked as though it had not been washed in many days.

“Come on into the kitchen, and let’s get you something to eat and drink, and then we’ll get you warmed up and dried out.” In spite of the late hour, I was happy to see Felix again. He was kind of strange, but, like Irene, I enjoyed his company.

Fifteen minutes later, Felix was in the living room sipping microwaved Swiss Miss hot chocolate and munching on a cold blueberry Pop Tart. He stared at the fire guttering in the fireplace, and said nothing at all. The rest of us watched him in silence.

Finally, Irene broke the ice. “Felix, it’s really good to see you again. We were beginning to wonder.”

Felix looked hollowly at her. “Wonder what?”

“Well, um, actually – ”

“We were beginning to wonder if you’d gotten yourself killed over in Tibet or wherever you were,” Lucy said helpfully, ignoring a reproachful glance from Irene.

“Would that I had.” Felix said glumly, turning back towards the fire. “Been killed, I mean.”

“Oh, come on, it couldn’t have been that bad,” said Matt. “I mean, there’s other fish in the ocean, you know.”

Felix looked up, utterly confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Women, man,” Matt said, throwing an arm around Felix’s thin shoulders. “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. What was her name?”

“Matt -- ” Irene started to rise threateningly from her chair.

“There was no woman,” Felix said. “It’s nothing like that. Believe me, I wish it was.”

“You do realize that they kicked you out of Penn,” Matt said. “You seem to have forgotten to leave them a forwarding address. You’re gonna have to apply for readmission.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Felix said mournfully. “I’m not going back. Not after what I’ve been through.”

“Well, what happened?” I asked. “You can tell us.”

“Yes,” Lucy added. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Why don’t you all lay off Felix,” Irene snapped. “He’s exhausted and doesn’t want to talk about anything.”

“No, that’s okay.” Felix set aside his empty hot chocolate mug. “I probably should tell you, and then you can decide whether to keep me or throw me out in the rain.”

“What, the police after you? Did you rob a bank or something?” Tony exchanged glances with Lucy.

“Do you really want to know?” Felix asked. “Because once I tell you, you may regret ever asking.”

We all answered in the affirmative. Felix sighed. “Okay, then, so -- ” He stopped abruptly and looked at me. “Doug, did you lock the door?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Go lock it right now. And put up the chain and deadbolt. And make sure the other doors are locked as well.”

“Felix, what in the world -- ”

Felix’s nostrils flared with impatience. “Just lock the doors, now! Then I’ll tell you what happened. Whether you believe me is your problem.”

I got up and locked the dining room, kitchen, and basement doors, and returned to the living room. The Scrabble game was forgotten; all eyes were now on Felix, who had not said a word during my absence.

As soon as I sat down, he cleared his throat, and after a nervous glance at a rain-spattered window, began speaking in a soft monotone.

“You all know my interest – some would call it an obsession – with Tibet,” he began, his eyes still flitting from window to window. “After mastering Vedic Sanskrit and wading through the Dhammapada in the original Pali, I found my attention turning increasingly to the Land of Eternal Snow. The Tibetan language, of course, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Indo-Aryan languages, except for the Sanskrit borrowings, so it seemed a worthy challenge. Neither Vambery nor Burton ever learned it, so I found myself poring through the writings of David-Neel. She made it to Lhasa at age 50, you know. Anyway, it was in one of her volumes that I first learned about the rolang.”

He fell silent and looked around again, and thunder rolled in the distance. Having no idea what he was talking about, we all waited patiently for some sort of clarification. After an interval when he seemed to be listening for something, Felix continued.

“Rolang is a Tibetan word meaning ‘standing corpse.’ The creation of a rolang is said to be the supreme feat of Tibetan magic, and its successful consummation confers on the celebrant unparalleled powers. From the moment that I first read David-Neel’s brief description of the ritual, I knew I had to research the matter further, and that meant going to Tibet and finding a sorcerer who could perform such a feat.”

At this point, Lucy excused herself and headed upstairs to her room. She was a strict vegan, and had no tolerance for any discussion of death or bloodshed.

“Say hi to Meg, Luce,” Matt called out. “Tell her she’s welcome to grace the rest of us with her presence anytime she wants.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and gave no answer.

Felix watched her go, then turned to the rest of us. “What I’m going to tell you isn’t for the squeamish, so you might want to decide now whether to follow her example.”

No one moved.

When he saw that the remainder of his audience was appreciative, Felix continued. “I flew to Lhasa and, once through customs and all that, I managed to evade the authorities and slip out of the city unnoticed with a bunch of yak herders. The Tibetans have no love for their Chinese overlords, of course, and were more than happy to aid and abet a white man who spoke their language. I got as far north as Sepogön, an area little changed since David-Neel set foot there decades ago. After making discrete inquiries among the locals, I was directed to the Thags-yang temple back in the mountains, where an extremely powerful sorcerer – one of those whom the Tibetans call ngagspa – was said to reside. No one from the village ever went near the place, which the people of Sepogön claimed was frequented by demons and the walking dead who had been resuscitated by shamans. In the end, I made the long and lonely trek alone with nothing except the clothes on my back.

“The way to the Thags-yang temple was desolate and wild, even by Tibetan standards. I saw none of the usual wildlife, and plant life was almost nonexistent. I did notice odd tracks here and there, and more than once had the sensation of being watched by what seemed to me to be malevolent eyes, but possibly it was just my imagination. Anyway, I pressed on, and reached the temple grounds late in the day.

“There were perhaps a dozen sullen-faced lamas in residence there, who were none too pleased to see a white man in their domain. Their faces softened a little when they heard me speak their language, and they finally took me to meet the presiding ngagspa. He was a magnificent fellow who wore an apron of carved human bones, and I prostrated myself before him and told him I had come to learn the secret of the rolang.

“At this he began quizzing me sharply about my background and beliefs, and it was several hours before he seemed to be satisfied I was neither an impostor nor a casual curiosity-seeker. The rite of the rolang, he told me, was, of all the rites of high sorcery, by far the most dangerous. The rolang is nothing less than a demon tenanted in a human corpse, which will destroy the one that awakens it if it can. The only way to tame the monster, he told me, was to grapple with it and bite off its tongue, and the tongue so procured becomes a ngagspa’s most prized magical possession, more so even than his phurba or magical dagger. If he failed to bite off the creature’s tongue, it would kill him on the spot or track him down and destroy him. The ngagspa told me that three nights from then, one of his acolytes was going to attempt to raise a rolang, and that he would permit me to attend, as long as I didn’t interfere and did precisely as I was told.

“For three days I lingered at the temple, witnessing many strange things. One of the lamas was a master lung-gom-pa, and could leap like a gazelle whenever he entered a trance. I was warned not to wander outside the temple grounds, since the surrounding hills were said to be infested with flesh-eating demons that only the lamas possessed the know-how to keep at bay.

“On the evening of the third day, all the lamas gathered outside the inner sanctum of the temple, a dark and clammy chamber adorned with skulls and lurid images of various Tibetan demons and demonesses, lit only by a single candle manufactured from human fat. The acolyte who was to attempt the ritual was young and obviously very frightened, and wore a black robe into which human bones had been woven. We all took our seats on the cold stone floor outside the sanctum and waited. Presently, two more lamas entered carrying the corpse of an elderly man on a white litter. We watched as these two entered the inner sanctum, laid the corpse on the floor, and withdrew. The presiding ngagspa then blessed the young acolyte and whispered something in his ear. The young man nodded and entered the sanctum.

“You can imagine my disappointment when the other lamas arose and closed and bolted the great stone door, shutting the young acolyte inside with his ghastly companion. No one, not even the ngagspa, was permitted to watch what happened next (I was later told that the doors were also closed to protect the others since, if the celebrant failed in his task, the monster would destroy anyone in its path. Once, one of the lamas whispered to me, a celebrant had been overcome, and the creature within had broken out and killed three lamas before being driven away. They found the sanctum full of blood, but the luckless acolyte had been devoured by the monster. When I asked where the rolang had ended up, the lama just shrugged and made a sweeping motion with one hand encompassing the surrounding mountains).

“On this occasion, we all waited breathlessly outside the stone door. All of the other lamas held their phurbas upright, and from through the thick stone, we could hear faintly the murmured mantra of the acolyte as he lay on the floor beside the corpse, whispering in its ear to awaken it.

“For a long time, nothing happened. Then we heard the acolyte’s voice quicken and then fall silent. Following that, there was a strange gurgling sound, and I suddenly felt a terror unlike anything I have ever felt before. Beyond the thick stone door, I knew, some unimaginably foul presence was awakening, and the fear of it coursed through the assembled lamas like ice water.

“Then the acolyte shouted aloud the Triple Jewel, and we heard the sounds of a struggle. There was a tremendous bumping and crashing around, and it sounded like the young man was fighting desperately for his life against some terrible foe. There was a clanking of metal as various idols were knocked aside, and several times the door shivered in its hinges as a weight crashed against the other side.

“This lasted for at least several minutes, when suddenly we heard an awful shriek and a blast of cold air extinguished the lamps. All of us jumped up, certain that the young acolyte within had lost the contest and that any moment, the revenant would come through the bolted door into our midst. But the head ngagspa called out for everyone to be calm, and relit one of the lamps. By its light, we could all see that the door held fast, and no sound came from within.

“The ngagspa approached the door and rapped cautiously with the blade of his phurba. From inside, to our great relief, we heard the voice of the acolyte in reply, a sort of triumphant shout. The lamas drew back the bolt and opened the door to the sanctum.

“Inside, we found the acolyte lying on the floor, utterly exhausted. His arms were laced with bloody wounds, which looked like the marks of teeth and long nails. In his hands he held a bloody tongue, a repulsive, grayish object that hardly looked to me like a great talisman. The corpse of the old man lay twisted on the floor, its eyes wide and staring. Bending down for a closer look, I could see blood on its teeth and lips and gobbets of bloody human flesh under its nails which, like the nails of all corpses, had grown long and unkempt in the days since its death. The room was in a shambles; all of the idols had been knocked over, and the extinguished taper lay trampled on the floor. I could see plainly in the dust two different sets of footprints.

“Well, I wanted to see more, since nothing of what I had witnessed was proof positive that in fact a corpse had been resuscitated. But all the lamas were convinced. They crowded around and congratulated him, and the corpse was carried off and buried in some secret spot, bereft of its tongue. As for that grisly relic, it was dried and attached to a golden necklace, and its bearer became a venerated presence in Thags-yang.

“At length, I understood my welcome to be wearing thin. The ngagspa told me that the rolang was a very rare ritual, and would likely not be attempted again for years. He did confide in me the mantra used to carry out the ritual, which I carefully wrote down, thinking to publish something sooner or later.

“I returned to Sepogön with an escort of three lamas, who kept a wary eye on the surrounding terrain, convinced we were being stalked by demons and other unmentionable beings. I bade them a warm farewell, which was not reciprocated, and made my way furtively back to Lhasa, where I mingled for a few days with the tourists before catching a flight to Beijing and then back to the States.”

At this point he paused and looked at the floor, and his face was gray with miserable fear. “I wish I’d never boarded that plane to Tibet,” he said, shaking his head. “I should have kept my curiosity in check, and stayed home. As soon as I got back, I found I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen. The images of that bloodied corpse, the severed tongue, and the triumphant lama stayed fresh, and began cankering my thoughts. I began to doubt whether I had seen a display of supernatural power, or whether I’d been duped by some very clever con artists. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a naïve Westerner fell for Oriental wiles; everybody’s heard of the Indian rope trick.”

He sighed. “After all, the lama could have made all the noise himself and dragged the corpse around to produce the footprints and other effects. As for the removal of the tongue, that could be accomplished easily enough with a keen-bladed phurba. The more I thought about it, the less convincing the whole thing seemed, until I was all but certain that I had been taken in by some clever hoaxters bent on enjoying themselves at the expense of a foreigner. At least, that was the thought that kept nagging at me. In such a condition, I couldn’t focus on my studies, and my aunt outside of Allentown, where I was staying, got impatient and threatened to throw me out of the house unless I got a job of some kind to help with expenses.

“Well, I decided to find work to help get my mind off the doubts that pecked at the edges of my every waking thought. I found a job in the county mortuary, of all things. I guess I’d already half-formed an idea of what I was going to do, and so I chose a job most suited to the purpose.

“In spite of all the stories you hear about such places, mortuaries are pretty humdrum most of the time. You quickly get used to the smell of formaldehyde and the parties of grievers. As for the bodies themselves, well, you never get completely used to them, but after a few nights, you’re no longer afraid to be alone with a cadaver, and you stop imagining things, like the dead hand that twitches in the corner of your eye, or the corpse that you think sat up when your back was turned.

“A few nights ago, I found myself alone in the embalming room with the corpse of an old man that reminded me somewhat of the one in Tibet. I saw the same attenuated limbs and blotchy face, and the same long, ugly yellowish nails. He was a Caucasian, but the resemblances were there nonetheless. And as I sat there in the embalming room, suddenly the plan that had laid half-formed in my mind for weeks crystallized. I was going to find out for myself if the rolang mantra worked. I rationalized to myself that I only wanted to verify that it in fact didn’t work, to prove that the entire ritual I had supposedly witnessed was a fraud. However, a small part of me wanted, I must admit, some kind of positive result.

“So I turned off all but one bank of fluorescent lights and knelt down beside the corpse, which lay on its back, face upward and eyes closed, clothed only in a hospital robe. The man had died that day of a massive stroke, and no autopsy had been performed.

“Feeling foolish, maybe even a little deranged, I bent close to the thing’s ear and began whispering the secret mantra over and over. At first, I promised myself that if nothing happened after five minutes, I’d give up the whole thing and forget about it. But as the minutes ticked past – hummed past, I should say, because the electric clock on the wall was the only other sound except for the rumble of an occasional passing car – I got more and more agitated and determined to somehow make the grotesque ritual work. For fifteen or twenty minutes I kept it up, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly and deliberately.

“All of a sudden, right about the time my throat began to ache from the exertion, I thought I caught a movement out of the corner of my left eye, where the corpse’s hand lay on the table. Not stopping my recitation, I turned my head slightly and watched carefully. For another minute or two, nothing else happened. I had just concluded that I had imagined it, when the fingers twitched unmistakably. Again I felt that same icy terror I had experienced at Thags-yang as the forearm jerked convulsively, and then the whole body shuddered on the table. Before I could move, the head turned suddenly, and I found myself looking into the thing’s awful eyes. They were amber-colored and had this gloating expression, and the corpse’s tongue flicked provocatively at me through yellow stumps of teeth.

“I jumped back in surprise and terror and sprang to my feet as the thing on the table sat up. The lights flickered and dimmed as the rolang stood unsteadily, and I knew that I must fight or perish.

“As I had been instructed, I closed with the creature and began to wrestle with it, almost overcome by the terrible smell. Except for the eyes, it looked like a spindly old man, but it fought with the strength of a wild beast. It wasn’t breathing as such, but it did sort of make a hissing, gurgling sound from time to time. As we struggled, I forced my face against its face. It leaped and bounded about with the agility of a hare, not at all like those sleepwalking zombies in the movies. I was certain that, if I relaxed my hold at all, the thing would pounce on me like a beast of prey.

“Now we were eye to eye, and I could smell the thing’s fetid breath. It kept flicking its tongue against my cheek, mocking me, I think, and my inability to finish the job. Finally, the moment came when I knew I would have to go for its tongue or be overpowered. But before I could make the attempt, the rolang made a horrible sound, and the lights went out completely and the clock stopped.

“In the dark, I heard my antagonist give a triumphant gurgle. I knew I had no more chance, and so I shoved the monster as hard as I could, and over we went onto the floor. Somehow I disentangled myself from the creature; perhaps the fall had disoriented it for a moment. Anyway, unable to think of anything else to do, I shouted aloud the Triple Jewel and raced for the door. Behind me, I heard the rolang scrambling to get up, making a kind of low moaning sound.

“Somehow, I found the door in the pitch dark before the rolang found me, and slammed and locked it from the outside just as the thing within began attacking the door from the other side. Knowing my life depended on it, I fled on foot, returning to my aunt’s house just long enough to grab my travel bag, expecting all the while the creature to show up.

“Knowing the authorities would think I was responsible for the damage and the missing corpse, I hiked all night into Allentown, and caught a Greyhound to Trenton, where I holed up in a hotel. The next morning on the local news, I saw reports of vandalism and cadaver theft at the mortuary where I had worked. The police had gone looking for me when the damage was discovered, and had gone straight to my aunt’s house. There, they discovered her mutilated remains, and now they’re hunting for me up and down the East Coast. Obviously, the thing went to her house and, failing to find me, killed her instead. As soon as I saw the news, I fled from the hotel and rode all the way here on a stolen bicycle. Oh, don’t worry,” he added, “I won’t stay long. That thing is out there somewhere, and it’ll find me if I stay anywhere for more than a day or two.”

We all stared in mute horror at our former housemate. I’d heard news of the murder of the old woman near Allentown, but hadn’t connected it with Felix. And now he was in our midst, with an impossible story about Tibetan necromancy to conceal the fact that he had just committed a brutal murder.

“Felix,” I said quietly, “why don’t you just tell the truth? We’ll help you get a good lawyer and all that, you know we will. You can’t –“

At this Felix became very agitated. “What are you talking about? I have told the truth, improbable as it may sound. What do you think I am, a killer? Is that what you’re implying?”

For the first time, he looked at all of our faces. Seeing our expressions, he shook his head. “Oh, okay, I see now. I shouldn’t have told you the truth. You all think I’m crazy, don’t you? Well, don’t worry, then. I won’t stay if my old friends think I’m a murdering lunatic. I’ll leave right now.”

He stood and started for the door, and none of us made any move to stop him.

Suddenly, the lights went out. The rain outside had gotten worse, so we all assumed it was a power failure. But Felix made a frightened mewing sound in the dark. “It’s here,” he whispered. “It’s found me, somehow. Don’t let it in. Please, please, keep the doors and windows shut.”

In spite of the lunacy of his story, I was starting to find the whole thing quite unnerving. Felix had always been melodramatic, and now he had all of us huddling together in the dark while the storm raged outside.

“’Felix,” I finally said, after a minute or so, “I really don’t think—”

Before I could finish my sentence, Irene, who was sitting across from me, let out a scream and pointed at the window behind me. “Close the blinds, close the blinds, there’s something outside. Please, please close them, and lock all the doors. Do it now!”

“What’s the matter, Irene?” Matt said, putting a reassuring arm around her. “Tony, close the blinds and lock all the doors. Irene, what the devil did you see?”

“I don’t know,” Irene said, shaking like a leaf. “I couldn’t see the face, but there was someone outside that window just now, looking in. Someone very thin, that’s all I could see.”

“Well, whoever it was isn’t getting in,” Tony said from the dining room, trying to sound confident. He bolted and chained the dining room door and headed off to the kitchen to lock the back door.

Suddenly Irene jumped up. “What about Lucy and Meg upstairs? If there’s some lunatic outside, they ought to be down here with the rest of us.”

“Leave them,” said Felix tonelessly. “Nobody leave this room. We have to stay together. If that thing gets in --”

“Everybody just calm down and take a deep breath,” I said. “It’s just a power outage from the storm, nothing more. There’s nobody out there in this weather.”

“It’s here,” whispered Felix. “Maybe it will leave the rest of you alone. It’s come for me.”

“This is nuts,” I said. “You’ve just confessed to cold-blooded murder, and now…” I pulled out my phone and tried to dial 911. There was no reception.

I grabbed Felix by the arm. “Just cause the phones aren’t working, doesn’t mean we’re letting you run off. As soon as this storm’s over, we’re taking you straight to the police.”

Felix tugged weakly. “You need to let me go. I don’t care what you believe. You’re all in danger because of me. Just let me go and you’ll never see me again.”

“Hey, where the hell’s Tony?” Matt demanded suddenly.

Felix raised a hand. “Shhh! Everybody quiet.” He looked and listened in the dim light towards the dining room and kitchen beyond that. We all listened with him, and suddenly we all heard a stealthy sound from the kitchen, like very soft, measured footfalls.

Felix’s eyes were wide in the next lightning flash. “It’s inside, it’s inside the house,” he moaned. Then he whispered, “Quick, everyone behind the chairs, out of sight.”

Unnerved, Irene and I ducked behind the sofa, and Matt behind an armchair. Felix dove into the cubbyhole under the writing desk beside the stereo system.

We waited, trying not to breathe, as soft footsteps came across the dining room. A terrible smell of death and formaldehyde wafted into the living room, and with it, a paralyzing fear. I am not ashamed to admit I felt tears of pure terror running down my face. Irene, who was trembling and barely breathing, grabbed my hand and squeezed. The footsteps stopped. I plucked up the courage to peek around the armchair, expecting the worst. Something was standing stock-still in the doorway, but I couldn’t make out any features in the darkness, except for a couple of pricks of amber yellow where the eyes might have been. In a dim flicker of lightning, I had a brief impression of ragged hair, an emaciated frame, and bare feet, but the face was shadowed.

The thing took a step forward into the room. I was within a split second of making a panicked dash for the windows when there was a thump from upstairs, followed by footsteps in the hallway. In a flash, the apparition was gone, and we heard a creaking on the stairs.

We all came out of our hiding places, and Matt was all for making a break for it, now that the creature was upstairs. “We can’t just run away and leave Lucy and Meg,” Irene hissed, her voice breaking.

At that moment we heard Lucy start to scream, and the sound of footsteps pounding down the hall. Meg yelled from the bathroom, and Lucy hammered on the door, begging to be let in.

“Please, please, somebody do something,” Irene sobbed. “We’ve got to help them.”

But it was too late. From directly above us came the sound of the bathroom door being wrenched open, and then the most terrible screaming I’ve ever heard or hope to hear. The screaming ended abruptly, and was followed by a horrible ripping, crunching sound, like bark being torn from the trunk of a live oak tree.

At this, our courage broke, and we fled for our lives. In the kitchen, we found Tony spreadeagled across the threshold, his head nearly twisted from his torso. Irene shrieked at the sight and fled into the rain and the storm without looking back, with Matt at her heels. For some reason, I hesitated in the middle of the lawn.

Felix was standing behind me, looking back into the dark house. “It’s me it’s looking for,” he whispered, ignoring the pouring rain. “It’s not going to stop until it gets what it wants.” From a deep coat pocket he drew forth a long, ornately-carved dagger. “My phurba,’ he explained. “Maybe I can kill it with this.” He started back toward the house.

I begged him to flee, promising to hide him somehow, but he shook his head. “Time to take care of this, one way or the other,” he said. “No more running. No more killing. You run away, go!” He dashed back onto the back porch and in the kitchen door.

Unable to run away, I followed cautiously, but by the time I reached the back porch, Felix was out of sight, whether upstairs or downstairs, I couldn’t tell. I scanned the dark kitchen but saw no lurking menace.

No sooner did I step inside the kitchen than I heard Felix’s hysterical voice from somewhere upstairs. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! I’m here. Come and get me. Come on, show yourself, monster.” He added some phrases in Tibetan, or at least that was what it sounded like.

There was a thump as a door was thrown open, and Felix screamed like the damned. A horrible crash followed, and then an awful gurgling sound. I felt then such a wave of black malice, coming from the abomination upstairs, that I felt physically ill. Then suddenly the sounds stopped. There was a tearing sound, heavy footsteps, and then the crash of an upstairs window shattering. I raced to the dining room window as a heavy thud came from the lawn, and had a fleeting glimpse of a dark, wraithlike figure carrying some large burden, fleeing into the night.

The police arrived, with Matt and Irene, a few minutes later, and found me sitting on the kitchen floor beside Tony’s wretched remains, too frightened to move. Upstairs they found the remains of Lucy and Meg strewn all over the bathroom. The hallway was covered with blood and the wallpaper slashed to ribbons. But of Felix, they found only a single token, on the sill of the shattered upstairs window: a human tongue, still warm, torn out at the roots, pinned into the wood by the blade of a Tibetan phurba.

[huwujiu]

Helping Hand

Word count: 2.8 K

“It’s really too bad about the hands,” Celeste observed, setting down her coffee cup with a wince. “Arthritis, I mean. It seems to get worse with each passing month, and the pain pills don’t help much anymore. It’s getting so I can barely sign my own name.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” her friend Doris sympathized. “Ever since I reached seventy, I can’t get my hands to do the simplest tasks. Heaven knows the spirit is willing, but the joints are weak. They say almost everybody gets arthritis if they live long enough.”

“Probably so.” Celeste, trying to pick up her cup, fumbled and nearly dropped it. “There I go again. I have my good days and my bad days and this, believe it or not, is a good day.”

“How do you manage, dear? I have to get Richard to open jars for me and even sign my name sometimes, but…” Doris’ voice trailed off awkwardly.

“But how do I manage since Harold passed on? It hasn’t been easy, believe me.” Celeste smiled unexpectedly and winked.

“Ah ha! I know that look!” Doris leaned forward. “Don’t tell me things are getting serious with old What’s-His-Name? Not that I’d blame you in the least. Gets lonesome without a man around, I imagine.”

Celeste made a sound of disgust. “You mean Edgar? He’s a waste of flesh and a terrible nuisance. Fifteen years younger than me and very good-looking, and you know perfectly well what that means!”

Doris sighed. “He’s after your money.”

“Of course! And takes almost no pains to conceal the fact. Probably thinks I’m so dotty, I won’t even notice. And he can’t take a hint, either. I’ve half a mind to get an attack dog and run the man off the next time he shows up. Which by the way” – Celeste glanced at the wall clock – “should be about seven o’clock this evening.”

“Just be blunt with him, dear. Tell him you’re onto his game, or that you’re still in love with your husband, or whatever seems best.”

Celeste snorted. “Don’t you think I’ve tried all of the above? I even told him – what was that phrase the feminists used to use – ‘a woman needs a man like a fish needs a wheelchair.’ He just laughed.”

“I thought it was ‘bicycle’” Doris ventured.

“At my age, ‘wheelchair’ is definitely more apropos, that’s what I told him. He didn’t know what ‘apropos’ meant.”

Doris frowned. “Seriously, how do you manage without help? Don’t tell me this Edgar opens jars for you.”

“Well, as for that” -- Celeste sucked in her breath and looked around conspiratorially before lowering her voice to just above a whisper – “I’ve been getting some help from kind of an unexpected source. I’m not sure whether I should show you or not.”

“Show me? You mean you have a live-in housekeeper or something?”

“Or something, yes. It’s, well, it’s just not quite what you might expect. Might even upset you a bit.”

Doris looked puzzled. “Upset me? My dear, we’ve been friends for how many years now? I’ve seen it all, and there’s very little that would upset me at my age, as you well know.”

“I guess that’s true.” Celeste stood briskly and beckoned. “Come on. I’ll let you in on my little secret. I’ve kind of been waiting for the chance to tell somebody.”

Doris followed her friend into the pantry and down into the cellar. It was a primitive farmhouse cellar with moist, cobwebby stone walls and a lumpy dirt floor. Towards the back, beyond a large metal sink, the walls themselves were mostly packed dirt where the floor sloped up and merged with the ceiling.

Celeste led the way past the sink and pointed at a large overcoat hanging on the dirt wall. “There!”

Doris was baffled. “All I see is an old coat.”

“Yes, but it’s not the coat. It’s what’s underneath it.”

“A coathook?”

“Use your senses, dear. Why would I or anyone else bother to install a coathook in a dirt wall?”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know, but--”

With a flourish, Celeste yanked the coat away, and Doris jumped back with a yelp of surprise. “Celeste, are you out of your mind? That’s a – that’s a--”

“I know, dear,” Celeste said soothingly. “It’s a hand.”

“But it’s – I mean, is it--?”

“Is it dead? No, I don’t think so.” Celeste picked up a broken broom handle leaning against the furnace and prodded the hand. It twisted abruptly.

Doris shuddered, but Celeste patted her reassuringly on the arm. “It’s quite all right, dear. You can take a closer look. Just not too close,” she added as Doris leaned forward.

The hand was too large, and the fingers too long, to belong to a person, Doris decided. Moreover, it looked and even smelled a little dead, even if it didn’t act it. It seemed to be growing right out of the wall at about eye level, attached to a wrist and an inch or so of visible forearm. The slender bluish fingers twitched and twiddled as Doris watched with awed revulsion, and the long jagged black nails raked furrows in the hard-packed dirt. Just beside the hand, a stepladder leaned against the wall.

“Well, what do you think?” Celeste was asking.

“It’s marvelous,” Doris said faintly. “but, um, dear, isn’t it, I mean, it is a hand. Isn’t it, you know, attached to somebody?”

Celeste shrugged. “Darned if I know. One day a couple of months back, I came down here, and there it was. Never saw it before. Well, at first, I was at somewhat of a loss as to what to do with it. In fact, I didn’t even notice it until it grabbed a piece of my hair and tore it right off my head while I was washing in the sink. Gave me a terrible fright.

“Well, as you can imagine, I gave it a good talking to and went for the axe. But when I came back, it had dropped the hair and was looking all droopy and contrite. So I finished washing the clothes – staying on the far side of the sink, of course – and thought it over. My arthritis was particularly bad that day, and I wasn’t looking forward to wringing out the items that couldn’t go through the dryer. And suddenly it occurred to me.”

Celeste stopped talking as she hit a mental speed bump.

Doris waited breathlessly for almost a minute as her friend stared blankly into space. Finally, she could contain her curiosity no longer. “What occurred to you?”

Celeste blinked and shook her head. “What? Oh, I’m sorry, you know how it is at my age. What was I saying? Oh, yes, the thought came to me how I needed an extra hand around here, and I looked at the thing and said out loud, ‘Well, if you could do something useful, like wring out these wet clothes, we might just get along.’ And you know what? It twisted upright and spread its fingers wide.”

Doris nodded. “You gave it the clothes, I suppose.”

“I did indeed, piece by piece. It squeezed them almost completely dry. Then I hung this big coat on it, kind of to keep it out of sight, and it didn’t seem to mind.”

Doris eyed the hand with new respect. “What else does it do?”

“Well, as you can imagine, once I found out it could wring out clothes and things, I tried out lots of other tasks. It can open any jar I give it. Or any bottle.”

“Really?” Doris looked doubtful. “I thought it took two hands--”

“Of course it does. All I do is hold up the jar – keeping my own hand out of reach, of course – and it twists the lid off like tissue paper. It’s prodigiously strong, you know.”

Doris shuddered. “I should think so.”

“Yes, so I have to be careful to stay out of reach. No telling what it might do if – well, anyway, I treat it with care. It’s no different from having a loaded gun in the house, I guess, although I never did. I wouldn’t even let Harold keep one around. Guns always scared me.”

Doris nodded vigorously. “Me, too. Ever since my cousin Jake accidentally shot his little sister.”

“Really? He shot her? Did she die?”

Doris shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no, unfortunately not. She grew up to be a real terror. We never got along.”

“Cousins can be such a nuisance,” Celeste reflected. “My cousin Harry was always trying to get me to go alone with him to the barn, but I --”

“Yes, dear, cousins are a trial, but what else can it do?” Doris could not take her eyes off the hand, which was now swinging to and fro like a five-fingered pendulum.

“What else can what do?” Celeste was looking confused again.

“It. That thing of yours.” Doris pointed at the hand.

“It’s not a thing, dear. Don’t treat it like some kind of appliance. It’s not an object. It even has mood changes, you know.”

Doris harrumphed. “Don’t tell me you’ve given it a name!”

“No, I tried to think of one at first, but nothing really occurred to me that seemed very apt. Oh, but you know what? It did take care of my vermin problem.”

“Really?” Doris was looking at her friend with unalloyed wonder. “How did you manage that?”

“See that stepladder? I just put an assortment of crumbs – cheese, bread, and a bit of peanut butter, mostly – on top of the ladder, just within its reach. It won’t touch food – doesn’t like to get its fingers dirty, I think. I tried to offer it cookies and milk once, and do you know what it did? Threw the glass on the floor, and ignored the cookies completely. Anyway, the rats, mice, and squirrels had no problem climbing the ladder, and once they got within reach--” Celeste made a throttling gesture with her hands. “It’s really quite bloodthirsty, you know. It simply squeezed them into a bloody pulp. It was a lot of work to clean up, but I managed to dig a pit way back there”—Celeste pointed back into the gloom— “where I toss their remains. One of these days, I’ll have to cover it over, I guess. Anyway, it makes short work of anything within reach. And no more rats in the walls.” Celeste beamed at her friend, awaiting kudos.

“Well, others can think what they like, but I happen to think you’re a very fortunate woman,” Doris finally managed, as Celeste placed the coat back on its accustomed perch. “It’s hard to find good help these days, especially around the house.”

“Yes, especially help that keeps its mouth shut and doesn’t steal your jewelry.”

The two ladies went back upstairs. In due course, Doris departed and Celeste, humming to herself, prepared a light dinner.

Edgar arrived as if on cue at 7:00 sharp. Celeste heard the doorbell ringing insistently and went to let him in with a sigh. Edgar was in his late fifties, with a florid, handsome face and an unnaturally loud voice, and was always dressed to the nines despite being virtually penniless.

“Edgar,” Celeste said severely as he pushed past her and tossed his coat on an armchair, “you’re making a nuisance out of yourself. I’ve told you already I’m not interested in any of your proposals.”

Edgar dropped into the chair and winked at her. “You leave me no choice but persistence. I’m sure I’ll wear down your resistance sooner or later.”

“It isn’t resistance, Edgar. I know exactly what you’re up to. I wasn’t born yesterday, and besides, I’m perfectly content to live out my days in blessed solitude.”

“Nonsense, my dear. You need someone to look after you in your declining years. I may not be much to look at” – Celeste rolled her eyes at this customary bit of false modesty – “but I still have two strong hands and plenty of household know-it-all.”

“Which you’d be happy to offer in exchange for power of attorney. No, thanks.”

“You’re not getting rid of me, you know.” Edgar went into the kitchen and helped himself to a bowl of applesauce. “You’ve got no one else to turn to. Your children live on the West Coast, and you’ve got no near neighbors.”

Celeste looked at Edgar with new apprehension. “Are you trying to bully me Edgar? Because I detest bullies. I’m perfectly sound in mind and body, and I have sufficient help around the house for my needs.”

“You’re in denial.” Edgar spooned applesauce into his mouth. “You’ve got severe arthritis, your hands shake, and your memory is going. Plus,” he looked around the living room and clicked his tongue, “things are a real mess around here.”

“They are not! I’ve always been a good housekeeper.”

Edgar eyed her with a sly glint in his large brown eyes. “I don’t know about that. Things might get a bit messy around here if I did a little rearranging. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to convince a local judge to have you put into protective care.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” In spite of herself, Celeste felt real fear for a moment. She went into the kitchen so Edgar could not see the look on her face.

“Don’t underestimate me, my dear. I’m only doing what’s best for you.”

“I don’t need your help. Now get lost, and don’t come back.”

Edgar picked up an antique vase and casually dropped it on the floor. “Oops! Sorry about that. I’d hate to see anything else get broken. Wouldn’t look good if the police showed up and thought you’d trashed the place. They’d probably think you’re unfit to live out here by yourself.”

There was a long silence from the kitchen. Finally, Celeste sighed and said in a small voice, “Maybe you’re right, Edgar. I am in denial. Ever since Harold died, I’ve been trying to convince myself I could make it on my own, be independent, you know? People like you have been trying to help me, and all I can think is that they’re trying to take advantage of me.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re coming to your senses.” Edgar brought the empty applesauce dish into the kitchen.

“The truth is,” Celeste continued, “I seem to be able to do less and less for myself each day.” She wrung her hands and winced. “Some days I can hardly move my fingers, and my knees are so bad I can barely climb stairs anymore.”

“Really?” Edgar stared at her knees. “I didn’t know you had knee problems. You always seemed spry enough.”

“Yes, well, I try not to complain, but today, I couldn’t even bring myself to go down to the cellar.”

“The cellar? What’s down there?”

“My heavy coat,” said Celeste. “I left it hanging just behind the sink, and I’m pretty sure I left several hundred dollars in one of the inside pockets.”

Edgar’s eyes gleamed. “Several hundred? I didn’t know you kept that kind of money lying around.”

“Shopping money. I always pay in cash,” Celeste answered.

“Have no fear, my fair lady,” Edgar trumpeted, slapping her on the back. “I’ll be happy to go and fetch the coat for you.”

Celeste rubbed her back. “Oh, could you? I’d really appreciate that.”

“No problem at all,” Edgar laughed. “Just point the way.”

Celeste stepped into the pantry, switched on the cellar light, and pointed down the stairs. “Down there, go left, and it’s hanging just beyond the sink.”

“Be right back.” Edgar clumped down the wooden stairs and ducked out of sight.

As soon as he was out of view, Celeste switched off the light.

“Hey, turn the light on. I can’t see a thing!”

“I’m sorry, Edgar, the bulb just blew,” Celeste called. “Can you feel your way there?”

“Sure! I got a visual just before the light went out. I think I can find it okay. I’ll be right up.”

“Be careful! Remember, the inside pocket.” Celeste retired to the living room with a fresh cup of coffee and picked up her crossword puzzle magazine. She heard a bump as Edgar collided with the sink in the dark, then his triumphant shout as he found the coat.

After a brief pause, Edgar started making a very different kind of sound. Celeste smiled and began filling in a crossword. After a minute, she got up and closed the cellar door.

[huwujiu]

My Daddy

Word count : 5k

TW : mentions of abuse. Seriously. Nothing explicit, but strongly implied. 

“My Daddy’s smarter than your daddy.” 

Margie looked up from her box lunch, surprised and stung by such a preposterous claim. The new girl, Irma Something-Or-Other, stood regarding her with fey brown eyes.

“He is not,” Margie rejoined, setting down a half-eaten egg salad sandwich and standing up to face the newcomer. “My daddy’s loads smarter than yours.”

“Is not,” said Irma implacably, sitting down on the other side of Margie’s lunch box.

“Is so.” Margie remained standing, fists dug into her hips.

“Is not. My Daddy’s smarter than everybody else’s daddy. Can I have part of your sandwich?”

Disarmed by the non sequitur, Margie sat back down and broke off a part that was mostly crust. She handed it to Irma with a sniff and a toss of her ponytail.

“Well, my daddy’s a lawyer, and he’s never lost a case, so there,” Margie said after a moment’s reflection. “What’s your daddy do?”

Irma smiled. “My daddy works at home.”

“I bet he doesn’t have a job,” Margie said triumphantly. “I bet he’s unemployed.” She said the last word with the peculiar emphasis of an eight-year old trying out a new vocabulary item. Margie had heard the word on TV just last week, and asked her father what it meant.

“My daddy doesn’t need a job. He works by himself,” Irma answered, and wrinkled her nose in an infuriating So there! 

“So, where did you move from?” Margie asked, tired of the argument.

“Somewhere else,” Irma answered. “Not like here, a smaller town.”

Margie considered this in silence, and took a bite on one of the raw carrots her mother always insisted on packing with her.

“Do you have any friends?” Irma asked.

“Lotsa friends. There’s Tammy, Brittany, Joey—”

“Can I be your friend?” Irma swallowed the last bite of sandwich. “My daddy and I just came here in August, and I don’t know anybody yet.”

“I guess so. You can come over to Brittany’s house with me after school--”

“Nah, I can’t. I gotta go straight home. My daddy doesn’t like it when I’m late.”

The bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch half-hour. Irma stood. “See ya back in class. I gotta go to my locker. Thanks for the sandwich.”

“You’re welcome.” Margie finished her carrot stick and headed back indoors.

Irma and Margie ate lunch together the next day, and the day after that. Irma never brought a lunch of her own, so Margie always shared her sandwiches with her new friend.

Irma was different from her other friends, Margie soon realized. Aside from bragging about her daddy – which, Margie discovered, was Irma’s preferred way of starting a conversation – she said little about her family or background. In class, she sat silently at the back, staring at the teacher, Mr. Pugmire, with her odd dark eyes and occasionally playing with her long black hair.

Margie, talkative by nature, chatted freely about her parents, her pet cat Sweeney, and even her cousin Fred, who lived four hours away, was two years older, and whom Margie had worshipped for two years. Irma seemed to enjoy listening without comment, and Margie enjoyed having such an appreciative audience.

After a week of shared lunchtimes (and lunches), Irma appeared beside Margie as the latter left school, and walked partway home with her. When they reached the turnoff for Copper Creek Road, however, Irma stopped.

“Gotta go home, Margie. See ya tomorrow.”

“But can’t you come home with me? I got some cool new videos, and Mom’ll let us have ice cream --”

“Can’t, Margie. I’m sorry. Daddy wants me home.” Irma glanced up Copper Creek Road.

“You live out there? Way out in the country? You oughta take the bus.”

“Can’t. My daddy doesn’t like school buses. Guess he doesn’t want other kids knowing where I live.” 

Margie shrugged. “Okay, then, but sometime soon you’re gonna have to get permission from your daddy to come over for a visit. My mom really wants to meet you.”

“I dunno, maybe. I’ll ask daddy sometime.” With a wave, Irma was off down the road.

The next day there was trouble. The last class of the day, science, had always been Margie’s least favorite, a distaste Irma shared. The two of them frequently conspired to ignore Mr. Pugmire’s lessons, passing notes and drawings back and forth. Until that day, they had avoided detection, but now, in a moment of carelessness, Irma had let fall from her hands a caricature of the teacher that Margie had just drawn. The folded paper hit the floor with an audible snap, and Mr. Pugmire, ever alert, swooped over and snatched it up before either girl could move.

The class buzzed excitedly as Mr. Pugmire’s eyes scanned the picture, then fell silent as he held up the incriminating artifact.

“Who drew this?”

Silence. Mr. Pugmire turned on Irma. “Did you draw this, Irma?”

“I—”

“Irma, is this what you spend your days doing? You never pay attention, and your grades are barely passing.” Muffled titters from several other students.

Irma started to speak again, but Margie spoke up. “I drew it, Mr. Pugmire.”

The teacher wheeled on her. “You did, Margie? A good student like you? Then how come I found it under Irma’s chair?”

“I just – it slipped and fell, that’s all.” Margie did not want to implicate her friend by admitting she had passed the note.

“Oh, and then it somehow rolled all the way over here. Thank you, Margie, for trying to defend your friend, but it’s high time Miss Irma and I had a talk. Stay after school,” he said crisply.

“My daddy won’t like it if I’m late,” Irma said, staring unblinking at Mr. Pugmire. “He gets very unhappy when I’m not home when I’m supposed to be.”

“Oh, he does, does he? Well, maybe he should come in for a little chat, young lady. Your father needs to know about your poor performance.”

“My daddy loves me,” said Irma. “He doesn’t care how I do in this stupid school.”

More titters at this, but a baleful look from Mr. Pugmire shut them up. “Your father is doubtless aware that the law requires you to be here,” he said. “I’m perfectly prepared to hold you back a grade if you refuse to perform.”

“My daddy’s going to be very angry with you,” Irma said softly, almost musically, still fixing Mr. Pugmire with that odd stare. 

“Are you threatening me, young lady?” Mr. Pugmire’s voice had risen a notch, and for a moment, Margie was afraid he would strike her friend.

But Irma looked down at her hands folded on the desk top and whispered, “No, Mr. Pugmire. I’m sorry.”

“Well, then, that’s a little better. I’ll see you after class.” He strode back to the front of the room without a backward glance. 

After school, Margie waited faithfully outside the classroom. For an hour, Mr. Pugmire’s voice crackled on and on, reciting Irma’s many academic and social failings, threatening further punishment, and demanding answers. Irma, however, said nothing at all, which Mr. Pugmire evidently found disconcerting. Once, Margie peeped around the door and glimpsed her friend still staring fixedly at Mr. Pugmire from a front-row desk, while the other berated her.

Finally, Mr. Pugmire gave a sigh of exasperation. “Young lady, I can’t help you if you refuse to speak to me. I’m going to send a note to the principal’s office recommending you receive professional counselling. Also” – Margie heard the sound of pen scratching on paper – “I’m sending this note to your father, informing him of your behavior, and requesting a face-to-face meeting. You will give him this note, won’t you, Irma?”

Irma spoke for the first time. “Yes, Mr. Pugmire.”

“Well, so you haven’t lost your voice! Okay, you can go on home now, and we’ll discuss this more tomorrow.”

Margie heard the sound of her friend shouldering her school pack. A moment later, Irma appeared in the doorway. She grinned at Margie, who raised a finger to her lips. Then Irma turned and looked back into the room.

“Good-bye, Mr. Pugmire,” she said, and giggled softly.

As the two girls walked home, Irma was unusually talkative.

“You didn’t have to tell him you drew it, Margie,” Irma said, kicking at a pile of raked leaves beside the sidewalk. 

“I didn’t want him to pick on you, Irma. It’s not fair how he always treats you like a weirdo in front of the class. It’s bad enough that nobody besides me ever talks to you, and they all say mean things about us--”

Irma stopped and gave Margie a little hug. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “Mr. Pugmire’s just stupid, that’s all. He won’t bother us anymore.”

“But aren’t you scared about what the principal will say? And counseling? I hear that’s only for kids who are crazy.”

“My daddy won’t let them do anything to me,” said Irma as they reached the turnoff for Copper Creek Road. “See you tomorrow, Margie.”

Margie spent the evening worrying about what the next day would bring. Principal Miller, she knew, was very strict, and all sorts of lurid stories of torture and abuse in the principal’s office were a mainstay of schoolground folklore. She also worried that Mr. Pugmire might decide to punish her as well for sticking up for Irma.

But when the first bell rang the next morning, a young woman substitute came in and informed the class that Mr. Pugmire had called in sick. Margie flashed a smile of relief at Irma. The latter, who had deep black circles under her eyes, grinned back. For today, at least, there would be no further punishment.  Maybe, Margie thought hopefully, Mr. Pugmire would forget all about it when he came back.

Mr. Pugmire, however, never came back. To everyone’s surprise, he sent a brief, crudely-typed letter of resignation, packed a few of his belongings, and left town. Although no one had actually seen him leave, his car and some of his clothes disappeared, and his house was left vacant. 

The cheerful young substitute, Miss Davis, was delighted to be offered a full-time position through the end of the school year, and under her tutelage, Irma became, if not a model student, then at least a passable one.

One day not long after the Christmas holidays, Irma said unexpectedly, during a lull in lunchtime conversation, “My daddy says it’s okay for me to come over to your house.”

Margie stared at her friend. “But I thought --”

“He’s changed his mind,” Irma said. “Things are better now. Daddy’s not so mad at me all the time.” She took a bite of the large sandwich she had brought and grinned at Margie. For the last couple of months, Irma had started packing lunch, usually large sandwiches with slabs of some kind of meat, which she often shared with Margie. Irma’s face had lost some of its pallor, and her cheeks were fuller.

“Can you come tomorrow and stay overnight? I can ask Mom today.”

“I’ll ask Daddy.”

Permission from both sides was forthcoming, and the next afternoon, Irma followed Margie home from school for the very first time. She seemed a bit ill at ease as Margie’s mother welcomed her with all the usual platitudes (“We’ve heard so much about you!”), but soon settled down in the living room to enjoy a bowl of ice cream and a game of Uno with Margie.

“Where’s your daddy?” Irma asked through a mouthful of chocolate chip mint.

“He’s still at work, but he’ll be home later.”

“My daddy’s always at home,” said Irma with a superior smile.

Just after six, Margie’s father came home, looking weary as he always did after a long day in court. Margie ran into his waiting arms.

“And this must be Irma,” Margie’s father said after setting his daughter down. “Very nice to meet you.”

Instead of returning the greeting Irma, who had been watching with her arms folded, said solemnly, “My daddy’s a lot bigger than you are.”

“He is not,” said Margie peevishly. “My daddy’s six foot three.”

“He is so. And he has bigger teeth, and his fingernails are lots longer --”

The budding dispute was cut short by a summons to dinner, and the two girls soon forgot the argument. Margie bridled a bit when her friend rudely refused to eat her broccoli and carrots, stating that her daddy hated vegetables. She did manage to consume three helpings of ham, however, which mollified Margie’s parents.

After dinner, Margie and Irma played for a while with Sweeney and watched Beauty and the Beast.

A few minutes after eight, the phone rang, and Margie picked it up.

“Hello?”

There was no answer, but Margie heard what sounded like heavy, labored breathing.

“Is anyone there?” Margie glanced at Irma, who was watching her carefully.

After a moment, the line went dead, and Margie hung up.

“I think that was Daddy.” Irma’s voice sounded different, and Margie saw that she was no longer smiling.

“Can’t your daddy talk? He didn’t--”

The phone rang again, and Irma grabbed the receiver. “Daddy? Yes, I’m still – what? Daddy, I can’t – Daddy, I want to stay. No, I--” Irma fell silent for a moment, and Margie strained to hear any sound coming out of the receiver. She thought she heard something like very soft whispering, but she couldn’t be sure. As she watched, Irma’s face got sadder and sadder, and she kept glancing at Margie.

Finally, Irma said, in a very small voice, “Okay, Daddy, I’ll come home.”

She hung up and looked sorrowfully at her friend. “Gotta go home, Margie. Daddy says.”

Margie was aghast. “You can’t go home now. It’s too late.”

“Sorry, Margie, Daddy changed his mind. Says he wants me home right now.”

Margie’s mother, overhearing the conversation, offered to drive Irma home. “After all, dear, it’s very dark and cold, and it’s snowing pretty hard.”

Irma looked frightened. “No, no, please. I’ll be okay. I know the way. I’ll be all right.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Margie said as Irma donned her coat. “Just to be safe.”

“No!” The look on Irma’s face – of genuine fear – took Margie aback. “No, you mustn’t, Margie. I’ll be fine, really. Just – just stay here.”

“What made your father change his mind about letting you stay, dear?” Margie’s mother asked.

“Daddy gets lonesome when I’m away for too long,” Irma answered, and left without another word.

The following Monday, Irma was quieter than usual. For the first time in months, she brought no lunch pail, and Margie willingly shared with her. As Irma reached to take half a ham sandwich, her sleeve slipped back to expose a long weal on her arm.

“What happened to you?” Margie asked. “Did you fall on the ice or something?”

Irma guiltily pulled her sleeve back down. “No fair looking. I’m not hurt.”

“But what happened to you?”

Irma looked at the floor. “Daddy’s been in a bad mood. He always gets in a bad mood when he’s hungry.”

“Doncha have any food in the house?”

“We had lots for a few months, but we ran out last week, and now daddy’s very, very hungry.”

“Why doesn’t he go shopping?”

Irma didn’t answer.

That afternoon on the way home from school, there was more trouble. As the two girls walked past Krider’s Hardware, three older boys from the sixth grade overtook them from behind and blocked their path. The largest of the three, Billy Dreibelbis, was the most feared bully in the school. He poked a sausagelike finger in Irma’s chest, causing her to drop her schoolpack.

“Where ya goin’, freakshow?” Billy blustered. “Home to daddy?”

“Go pick on somebody your own size,” Margie said, trying to sound brave. “Irma’s done nothing to you.”

“I hear she’s nuts in the head,” Billy said, making a corkscrew motion with his right finger. “I hear she ain’t got no mom, an’ her old man can’t even hold a job.”

“Don’t you say things about my daddy!” Irma flared. “My daddy’ll get you if you don’t leave us alone.”

“Oh, yeah, riiight!” Billy said, and his friends laughed. “I bet your daddy’s home right now, drunk as a skunk. Bet he can’t even walk straight. Bet he never pays any attention to you, which is why you’re such a freakshow!”

“Freakshow, freakshow!” the other boys echoed.

“I may be a freak, but at least I’m not a fat retard like you!” Irma shouted.

Billy stepped closer. “What did you call me, freak?” he gritted, grabbing Irma by the jacket front.

“I … said … you’re … a … fat … retard …” Irma said, looking her tormentor right in the eye, and displaying no fear at all, “and … if … you … don’t … leave … us … alone … my … daddy’ll … take �� care … of … you … good.”

Billy gave her a contemptuous shove, and Irma fell backwards into a snow bank. Before she could get up, Billy shoved several fistfuls of snow in her face and emptied her schoolbooks into the slushy gutter. As Irma struggled to free herself from the snow, he swung a hamlike fist, knocking her down again and bloodying her nose.

“Nobody, includin’ a girl, threatens me and gets away with it, freak.”

Irma was regarding him with that same deadly gaze that Margie had seen on her friend’s face once before, after school with Mr. Pugmire. “When I tell daddy, he’s going to come and eat you alive,” she said solemnly.

Billy guffawed. “You tell your daddy to come over to my house anytime. My old man used to be Special Forces, and he has a black belt, and he always wears his .44 Magnum. My old man’ll totally waste your pathetic daddy if he comes anywhere near me.” Billy and his two friends shambled off, laughing loudly.

Margie helped her friend up. “Don’t worry about it, Irma. His whole family is like that. His older brother’s in prison, and my dad says Mr. Dreibelbis once killed a man in a fight, but only had to serve six months. Nobody ever messes with him.”

“My daddy’ll mess with him,” Irma said.

The next day, Billy Dreibelbis missed school. Margie noticed his two chums watching Irma from across the cafeteria, whispering and pointing. After Billy had been gone for a week, the police were summoned to the Dreibelbis house, where Billy lived with his father and a woman who wasn’t Billy’s mother. Although the car was parked out front and the television was on (as it apparently had been for days), the house was empty. Mr. Dreibelbis had failed to report to his job at the steel mill on the very same day that Billy had first missed school. The police found a Colt Anaconda with a six-inch barrel lying on the kitchen floor. The gun had been fired at least three times, but there was no forensic evidence of any kind of a struggle. The Dreibelbis family had vanished without a trace.

Margie heard about most of this over the dinner table, but thought little of it. No one at school, except possibly for a handful of his friends, missed Billy the bully one iota, least of all Irma. Margie’s friend seemed happier, and she even began packing lunch again.

Winter yielded to spring. The other kids avoided Irma now more than ever, especially Billy’s friends, who sometimes turned and walked the other way when they saw Irma coming.

As spring matured, Irma stayed overnight several times at Margie’s house, and they played Uno and watched videos until the wee hours. Summer vacation was approaching, and Margie hoped her mom would invite Irma to go to the shore with them. Irma hated water, Margie knew (“My daddy says water is bad”), but still she hoped her friend would enjoy the sun, sand, and boardwalk.

Sometime in mid-May, Irma stopped packing a lunch once again. Margie was unhappy because it meant that there would be no more of the tasty sandwiches that Irma always shared with her. The slabs of tangy salted meat between thick slices of bread that Irma brought in her lunch pail were extremely flavorful compared to her mother’s bland egg salad and ham confections.

One afternoon, as Margie and Irma watched Nickelodeon, the phone rang.

“That’s daddy,” said Irma, before Margie could pick up the phone.

Margie handed her friend the receiver and waited. Again she thought she could hear strange, barely audible whispering coming out of the phone, but she could not be sure.

Irma listened in silence, her face taut. Several times she glanced at Margie and then shook her head.

Finally, she spoke up. “No, daddy, I can’t. That isn’t fair. She’s my only friend.”

She stopped as her daddy evidently had more to say. This time Margie could definitely hear harsh whispering, and she shivered.

Irma was looking at Margie, and her face was a mask of misery. Finally, she shook her head violently. “No, daddy, I won’t, and that’s that. You can’t make me do that!”

She slammed down the phone and began to sob. Margie put an arm around her friend.

“What’s the matter, Irma? Is your daddy upset?”

“He’s angry at me, and he said terrible things just now,” Irma sniffled, “but he can’t make me do what he wants me to do. It isn’t right. You’ve been so good to me.”

She stood up with a quivering sigh. “I gotta go home, Margie, or daddy’ll be even madder.”

The following day, Irma did her best to avoid her friend. At lunchtime, Margie finally found her alone, with no food, brooding at her desk in an otherwise empty classroom.

“Irma, what’s wrong?” Maggie sat down next to her and started to open her lunch box.

“Go away!” Irma said fiercely. “Don’t give me food. Please, please, go away and don’t talk to me!”

“Why not? We’re friends, Irma. Don’t you want to be friends anymore?”

Irma looked up for the first time, and Margie saw she had a slight bruise on one cheek. She was wearing long sleeves in spite of the warm weather, but Margie could see the edge of another bruise peeping over one of the cuffs.

Irma, seeing her friend’s glance, pulled her blouse partway up, and Margie saw more bruises on her back.

“You see?” Irma hissed. “Daddy’s very, very angry at me. When I got home last night, he tried to make me promise to do a very bad thing, but I told him no. And then he hurt me.”

Margie was very worried. “You can come and stay at our house, Irma. You can sleep in my room.”

Irma’s eyes filled with terror. “No, no, I can’t ever come to your house again. Daddy says if I do, he’ll come looking for me. And we can’t be friends anymore.”

“Why not?”

“We just can’t, don’t you see? Maybe if we stop being friends, my daddy’ll stop trying to get me to do the bad thing.”

Margie did not know what to make of that, but Irma brushed away her offer of half a sandwich and buried her head in her arms.

For the next several days, Irma kept her distance. Once, Margie saw her in the bathroom with her long sleeves pulled up, her arms covered with welts and bruises. She lost weight, and her face paled in spite of the spring sunshine.

Then one afternoon, as Margie was starting home from school, she heard a familiar voice calling for her to wait up. Irma was out of breath, and her face, though gaunt as ever, was shining with new energy.

“I’m so sorry, Margie,” Irma said. “My daddy has been angry at me for more than a week, but now he’s better.”

“So what? I thought you said we couldn’t be friends anymore.”

“I was only kidding,” Irma said in a pleading tone. “Please let’s be friends again. Daddy says it’s all right.”

“I got new friends now,” said Margie, feigning aloofness. “Tammy and Brittany and Joey--”

“Pleeeeease, Margie,” Irma begged. She paused and then added, in a sly, cajoling tone, “Daddy says you can come over to our house to play now.”

“He does?” Margie squinted suspiciously. “How come he’s changed his mind all of a sudden?”

Irma smiled. “Well, daddy has been fixing up the house, and said we shouldn’t have guests. But it’s all done now. You can come over. Come on,” she tugged insistently at Margie’s sleeve.

“Right now?”

“Right now. Please. Daddy’s dying to meet you.”

“Weeeell--” Margie hesitated. “Maybe I should go home first and tell mom where I’m going.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll just stop in, meet my daddy, and then we can go over to your house and spend the night. Daddy says it’s okay.”

Margie shrugged and then smiled at Irma. “Okay, but let’s hurry. I don’t want to be late for dinner.”

“Oh, you won’t be,” said Irma with a giggle.

When they reached the Copper Creek Road turnoff, Margie walked with Irma along the winding lane out of town. At length, they reached a rusting mailbox at the head of a grass-covered lane that wound back into the woods. Margie noticed that the grass was slightly beaten down in a very narrow track, as though only Irma’s small feet had trodden the path. Of wheeled vehicles there were no tracks whatsoever.

“This way.” Irma beckoned down the path, and Margie followed. As they followed the path through heavy dark trees, Irma became more and more animated.

“There it is, there it is,” Irma said, pointing and capering excitedly as a house came into view.

Margie was surprised anyone lived in the place. Many of the windows were broken, and the roof looked likely to cave in. The rusting car in the overgrown yard was hemmed in by raspberry bushes.

“Are you sure you live here?” Margie asked doubtfully.

“Yes, yes, me and daddy both. Nobody ever comes by, so it’s nice and quiet.”

“Well, where’s your daddy, then?”

“He’s inside. Come on, come on!” Irma dashed up on the decrepit porch and pushed the door open.

Suddenly Margie did not want to go inside. There was something funny about the house, and the expression on Irma’s face—

“I – I think I want to go home, Irma.”

“Oh, come on. This is my home, Margie. We’ll go to your home pretty soon.”

“Well, okay.” Margie followed Irma inside.

The living room was dusty and unkempt. The wallpaper was in tatters, and piles of Irma’s things were scattered all around, as if no one had cleaned in weeks. Did Irma even have a daddy? Margie wondered. Maybe she lived out here alone like some kind of crazy tramp.

“So where’s your daddy? I don’t see anyone here.”

Irma giggled again. “Oh, he almost never comes upstairs. He’s down in the cellar. This way!”

Irma flitted into the kitchen, which was full of unwashed dishes and piled high with garbage. Beside the sink was a low door with an old-fashioned latch. Irma opened the door, and Margie could see a rickety staircase descending into the gloom beneath the house.

“Your daddy’s down there?” Margie eyed the dark doorway uneasily. “Are you sure you have a daddy?”

“Of course I do, silly. He just likes to stay downstairs in his workshop during the day.”

“Can’t he come up here?”

“No, it’s better if we go down there. Daddy!” she called down the stairs. “I’ve brought Margie, and we’re coming down.”

From somewhere beneath the floorboards, Margie heard something stir, and felt a rush of relief. Irma wasn’t a crazy tramp, and her daddy really was downstairs waiting for them.

Irma switched on a lightbulb that glowed feebly in the cellar, and down the stairs they went.

Margie was bewildered at what she saw. The cellar was very large indeed. Several large, grimy rooms stretched off into darkness beyond the limits of the weak bulb that hung by a fragile cord over the bottommost stair. There was a very strange odor, like how the neighbor’s cat had smelled after a car ran over it, but much stronger. A few large rusting steel pillars seemed to hold up the house, and Margie noticed several odd metallic objects attached to them, hanging on chains. On the packed dirt floor, Margie could just make out several large stains, and what looked like a few splinters of bone.

Off in the darkness, something big was stirring.

“Irma, can we go now? I don’t think I want to stay here.”

Irma did not answer. She was fumbling with one of the metal things attached to a steel pillar just behind Margie. Suddenly, Margie felt Irma grab one of her hands, and before she could react, something cold and metallic clicked around her wrist.

Margie looked down. She was handcuffed to the pillar.

“This isn’t funny, Irma. Let me go.” Margie pulled and struggled, but the handcuff held fast.

“I’m sorry, Margie,” Irma was saying as she backed towards the cellar stairs, “but daddy said he’d eat me alive if I didn’t bring you here.” The stirring in the darkness became the unmistakable sound of heavy, scraping footsteps.

“Let me go!” Margie screamed. “Irma, let me go! Aren’t we still friends?”

Irma shook her head. “We can’t be friends anymore, Margie. My daddy’s too hungry.” And she whisked up the stairs and slammed the door.

Behind her, Margie heard heavy breathing and, still writhing and chafing in the clasp of the handcuff, turned to meet Irma’s daddy.

[huwujiu]

“Poppy”

Word count: 1.9K

Little Marky adored his Poppy. 

Marky’s toys also occupied a place of honor, especially the large vanilla-colored horse his Poppy had given him on his fifth birthday, and his Mommy, perpetually exhausted and short with Marky on the rare occasions that she was home during the day, was acknowledged as well. But Poppy had always been the center of Marky’s world during the five years that his childish memory encompassed. 

Marky had no father, as far as anyone was aware, and none of the men who came for overnight visits, pretending to be Mommy’s friends, made any overtures of friendship to the little boy. Most of them acted like he wasn’t there, so Marky knew to go out on the porch or down in the basement to play with Poppy whenever his mother was entertaining guests.

His Poppy, he understood, was Mommy’s daddy, and had been living with Mommy since before he was born, since Mommy’s mommy had died.

As for Marky’s Mommy, she worked, and worked hard, three different jobs to support Marky, Poppy, and herself. She seldom spoke to Marky except in curt commands, and often locked herself in her room and came out smelling of liquor.

Poppy was much older than Mommy, and sometimes he drank too, but even when he did, he still found time to play with Marky. Poppy took his grandson to movies, although sometimes the movie theater people wouldn’t let Poppy in because he had been drinking too much. Or Poppy would push Marky on the swing in the backyard, or play with him in the sand box, or buy toys for him, or tell him stories. One time Poppy accidentally pushed Marky too hard on the swing, and he fell off and needed stitches on his face, but Marky knew it had been an accident. Another time, Poppy gave Marky a little bit of beer, and it made Marky sick. But Marky didn’t mind, because he knew his Poppy loved him.

Marky believed his Mommy loved him also, but he knew she hated Poppy. She often shouted at Poppy and called him names Marky didn’t understand. After the incident with the beer, she had hit Poppy and locked him in his room, calling him a bastard and monster, and threatening to call the police and have you locked up for abuse. That, according to Mommy, was something that she should have done when she was a little girl. I don’t know why I even keep you around, you sick old man, Mommy had said then, not caring that Marky was listening. And Poppy had done nothing but cry and cry, and say he was sorry again and again. Yeah, that’s what you used to say to me and mother, Mommy had snapped, slamming Poppy’s bedroom door.

But Marky always forgave his Poppy whenever he did something wrong, and wondered why Mommy didn’t do the same.

Then came the awful day when Poppy didn’t come home from his evening walk around the park. Marky usually went with him, but he had a stomach ache from something he had eaten at dinner, and stayed home to watch TV while his mother went into her room. After a while, there was a knock at the door, and Marky was surprised to see two policemen outside. They seemed very nervous, and asked to talk to Marky’s Mommy or Daddy. Marky told them he didn’t have a Daddy, just a Poppy, but he was out, and his Mommy might not be able to come to the door. The two policemen glanced at each other in an odd way, but before anyone could say anything else, Marky’s Mommy came out of her room.

The bigger policeman asked if this was the home of Charles Sunday, which was Poppy’s real name. When Marky’s Mommy said yes, the policeman said that he had some bad news, and Marky wondered what he meant. Then the policeman was talking quietly to Mommy, and Marky couldn’t hear everything he was saying – something about a large truck running a red light and never knew what hit him. And Marky’s Mommy started to cry and tear at her hair, and the policemen stayed for a little longer and went away. 

After they had gone, Marky was afraid to go near Mommy, she looked so strange. Her face was blotchier than usual and she sat staring at the wall without moving. Marky finally asked her when Poppy was coming home, and Mommy told him Poppy wasn’t coming home, and went into her bedroom without another word and locked the door.

Marky didn’t fully grasp that his Poppy was dead until the funeral a few days later. It was what his Mommy called a closed casket, because Poppy looked so bad that the Funeral People couldn’t put him back together right. That, at least, was how Mommy tried to explain it to Marky, but she had been drinking all morning, and had trouble speaking clearly. 

The funeral parlor was green, and Marky, dressed in corduroy pants that were too tight, followed Mommy, who was wearing black, into a small room with several rows of long slidy wooden benches and sat on the front row. The wood on his seat was so slippery that Marky had trouble sitting up straight, but his Mommy didn’t notice.

There were a few other people in the room, including Marky’s Uncle Mike, who lived in another city. Marky didn’t like Uncle Mike very much, and was glad when his Mommy didn’t speak to him.

After a while, a man dressed in black with white around the neck came in and said some words about Marky’s Poppy, and they sang a hymn that sounded awful. Then everyone stood up to go, and suddenly Marky understood that his Poppy was inside the big gleaming box on the funny-looking table, that he wasn’t coming home ever again, that there was just his Mommy now, and that Marky would never have anyone to play with anymore.

With a loud wail, Marky tore loose from his Mommy’s hand and ran to the box on the table. Before anyone could stop him, Marky threw himself against the box, hammering on it with his little fists, and crying and screaming, “Poppy! Poppy! Come back, Poppy! I want my Poppy!”

As many hands pulled him away, he thought he felt the box give a lurch. 

“Poppy! He’s still alive! He’s still alive! Let him out, please let him out!” Marky screamed and thrashed in his mother’s arms, and nearly broke free, but his mother, with the help of the minister, carried him firmly from the room.

The days that followed were empty. Marky cried every day for his Poppy, and Marky’s Mommy quit one of her jobs because there was no one to take care of her son. The other job, where Marky’s Mommy answered the telephone, had a day care center where Marky spent his mornings. Marky hated the day care center because the other children made fun of him and the young woman who was in charge kept making him sit in the corner for throwing toys across the room. 

In the afternoons, Marky went home with Mommy, and she locked herself in her room for hours and drank and watched TV while Marky sat in the living room in the big chair where his Poppy used to sit and stared out the window and did nothing at all. The men still came at night, the men who went into his Mommy’s room and never paid him any attention. Marky ignored them and grieved for his Poppy, whose picture Mommy had removed from the shelf the day he had died. After a few days, Marky had a hard time remembering what his Poppy had looked like.

Then late one afternoon, Marky was watching the rain fall from a gray autumn sky while his Mommy was locked in her bedroom. The raindrops ran down the windowpane and splattered on the outside sill Sprit! Sprit!

Someone knocked at the front door. 

Marky ignored the knock; his Mommy had no friends that Marky wanted to see and besides, she was probably drunk by now.

The knock came again, a heavy, insistent knock, and Marky heard a scraping noise on the front step. With a frown, he turned on the TV and made the volume loud so whoever was outside would go away.

But the knocking continued, getting louder and more demanding as the rain outside came down harder and harder. Finally, Marky got down from Poppy’s chair with a sigh, walked across the room, and flung the door open, ready to tell the person outside to go away and leave them alone.

His Poppy stood there in the pouring rain, and it looked like he was trying to smile at Marky. His head was shaped wrong and one eye was missing, and he was wearing very odd clothes, but it was his Poppy nonetheless.

Well, Marky, aren’t you going to give your Poppy a hug? Poppy asked, and Marky, with a cry of pure joy, ran into his Poppy’s arms. His Poppy picked him up and carried him inside. He smelled funny and was holding Marky so tightly Marky almost cried out, but Marky only understood that his Poppy had come home, and everything was going to be all right. He wriggled free of his Poppy’s grasp, ran over to his toy box, and started pulling his toys out for the first time in weeks. He turned around, holding up his vanilla-colored horse, and saw his Poppy coming towards him, arms outstretched to pick him up again, with a very strange look on his ruined face. Then Marky hesitated, but before he could do anything, he heard a scream from behind them. His Poppy stopped and turned around awkwardly. Marky’s Mommy was standing in the hallway with a half-empty beer bottle in her hand, staring in horror at Poppy.

His mother screamed again, and Poppy made a gurgling sound and spoke Mommy’s name. 

“Mommy, it’s Poppy, Poppy’s come home,” Marky shouted. He darted over to Poppy’s side and embraced one of his legs. He felt sticklike fingers brush through his hair, and smelled something like a thousand dead squirrels, but Marky didn’t care. He clung fiercely to his Poppy as his Mommy, still screaming hysterically, rummaged around in the closet beside the kitchen. His Poppy lurched toward Mommy, dragging Marky with him.

Then Mommy pulled an axe from the closet and told Marky to get away, and not to look. Marky clung to his Poppy’s leg all the more fiercely, crying at Mommy not to hurt Poppy.

But his Poppy seized Marky by the scruff of the neck with surprising strength and flung him out of the way as his Mommy swung the axe for the first of many times. Marky heard his Mommy screaming, and the sound of the axe blade as it did its terrible work. You’re dead, you bastard! his Mommy was saying. You can’t hurt me anymore! And Marky tried to stop his Mommy, but she pushed him aside and continued swinging the axe, and Marky ran into his room and locked the door.

After a while, the terrible sounds coming from the living room stopped, and Marky heard his Mommy weeping and screaming. Finally he couldn’t hear Mommy anymore, so Marky, clutching his vanilla-colored horse tightly, crawled into the warm space under his bed and sucked his thumb, and the rain outside splashed on the windowsill Sprit! Sprit!