In the box, underneath Gemma's assignment, was a stack of yellowing photos. They were also from October. More precisely: Halloween.
The children in costumes. Smiling as they held their soon-to-be-filled pillowcases. Gemma as Snow White. Her younger sister Ann as Princess Aurora. The youngest, Michael as Davy Crockett.
Maura tried but failed to remember the last time she'd spoken with either Ann or Michael. Did they hate her, she wondered? And worse, why would they hate her? At least Gemma and her children still loved her. At least there was that.
Maura looked to another photo with her dear James in his best suit – wearing his best tie, a black silk piece – holding Michael and the boy's goofy coonskin cap. Both grinned.
Then, finally, a photo of the family all together.
"Things had been good. No matter what Gemma thinks now."
Another picture. The three children in a line up front. Snow White, Princess Aurora, Davy Crockett. Behind them, on the left, a much younger, much happier 1964-Maura with sleek brown hair and smooth skin. To her right, a smiling James, kneeling, his arms spread wide around the shoulders of his children, tie hanging like a pendulum.
A tear rolled down Maura's cheek. She wished in that moment that she could go back.
Behind her, the house groaned.
She turned to look.
Nothing there.
"Just a creaky old house for a creaky old lady," she mused.
Maura sighed, giving the photos one last look before putting them away and heading downstairs. She sifted through them again, feeling warm.
But then stopped as she caught a glance at the family portrait.
Maura's mouth curled into a frown.
There, as she watched, James' face began to vanish – began to go dark. It became a featureless, black orb with two pinpricks of white where the eyes should have been.
Maura blinked.
James' arms and legs and suit began to stretch. They snaked around the children as the children's faces took on horrified expressions. Whipping tendrils curled around them. Their little eyes sunk inward, leaving Stygian caverns where there had been happiness and life.
Maura closed her eyes.
She heard them crying. Now. Behind her. All around her.
The radio downstairs howled.
She opened her eyes again.
There, in the photo, white scratches over her eyes and the eyes of her little ones.
More scratches above the blank face of her eyeless husband. Letters.
SEE YOU
Maura shrieked.
The house creaked and groaned.
***
She spent the rest of the day drinking wine, lost inside her own head.
Gemma and Bill were going to come by. Soon.
Everything would be all right then.
Maura ignored the crimson stains underneath and around her. Ignored the blood that dripped from her. Ignored the radio's screams between songs. Ignored the increasing off-ness of the lyrics.
Every time she tried to catch a glimpse of the dark shape that haunted the edge of her vision, it disappeared.
So she ignored that, too.
***
Someone was at the door.
Knocking.
Pounding.
He'd been out late at the bar again, hadn't he.
Maybe he couldn't find his keys.
***
Maura had fallen asleep in her chair.
She'd been in a solid, drunken slumber until the radio began screaming again.
She awoke with a confused start.
The clock read 3 a.m. Outside it was pitch black. Maura had no way of knowing precisely when she'd dozed off or how long she had been out. The good news for her was that dawn was a scant few hours away. And with the dawn came light, and with the light came life.
Gemma and her husband Bill would be here after to look at the wretched radio.
Maura shook her head as she stood, trying to clear away the nightmares of her slumber.
The shape stood just off to the side. Here but not here. Those bright horrible eyes. The black flood that came with him, roiling behind him. Too solid to not notice. Too ephemeral to run from.
She walked in a daze toward the bathroom and sat, ignorant of the blood that flowed from her into the bowl. She flushed and thought she heard something.
A knock in the night.
A rattling doorknob.
Still a little drunk, still half asleep, her only thought was: All right, hold your horses.
She walked back into the living room, where the sole source of light came from her reading lamp. It cast shuddering shadows against the walls – even though nothing was moving.
Maura did not see this. But she did notice that the radio had stopped squealing.
It played music.
The Mills Brothers' "You Always Hurt The Ones You Love" filled the air.
The knocks grew louder.
More insistent.
The doorknob rattled.
You always hurt the ones you love
The ones you shouldn't hurt at all
Pounding now.
Maura scrunched her nose and rubbed her brow.
A headache was setting in, though she had no idea if it was the alcohol or the music.
She bled more and more. Drops fell from her and pitter-pattered onto the floor.
I love to take the sweetest rose
And crush it till the petals fall
The front door shook with each blow. It jumped on its hinges.
Maura reached for the knob. "James, did you lose your keys again?"
Through the windows, she saw blackness. Not even the streetlights appeared to be on. Just a void. Maura flipped the switch to turn on the porch light. Nothing happened.
"All the stuff here," she said, pausing as a rush of heartburn hit her, "is broken and old and useless."
With a resigned grunt, she pulled the door open.
A gust of wind tore at her dress.
She gasped. A sudden, terrified intake of breath.
The radio squelched. The crooning voice coming from it dropped an octave, buzzed, became malicious.
I happily break the kindest heart,
With a hasty action you won't recall.
So, when I break your heart tonight,
It's because I love you most of all.
It dropped still lower, until it was just a heavy, deep rumble that shook the insides of Maura's head until she thought her mind would melt.
The shape flowed out of the darkness. At its back and all around it whipped a frenzied black mist of tendrils. The light in the room bounced off of its two perfect blue eyes.
Maura took a frightened step backwards. She stumbled and slipped in the droplets of blood that had fallen from her onto the wood flooring. She reached out to grasp something, anything, to steady herself, but came up empty.
She hit the floor with a pathetic, painful thump. Her knees and hips began to burn.
The radio kept on its angry deep static.
The shape walked forward again. It watched her. Towered over her small frame.
A rush of images flooded Maura's mind.
James. The children. Family meals. Picnics in the park. The sounds of laughter. The sounds of love.
The dark shape jerked his head to the side, as if his neck was broken.
It raised a single finger and wagged it at her.
No crying. Be quiet now, came the strange buzzing voice in her head again.
The images in her head were torn. Ripped in half. Coated in blood.
New images replaced them. New sounds.
James screaming at the children. Gemma crying as James hit her with his belt. Michael covered in welts and bruises. Ann weeping as she hid a fresh black eye.
James pounding on the door after another late night at the bar. James slapping Maura. Maura letting James push her legs open. Giving in because it was easier than fighting.
More bruises and blo
od on the children.
All of it drenched in red and the cries of her children.
You were worthless.
Maura covered her ears. She shook her head as the radio howled. "No, no, that didn't happen. It didn't happen like that. None of that happened!" she screamed.
The shape watched.
"Who are you?" Maura shrieked, staring up at the tall man. "Who are you? What are you?"
The shape watched.
Maura crawled. She dragged herself toward the kitchen on shattered hips. She had to get to the phone. She had to call Gemma. Or 911. The police. Someone. She needed help.
The shape took one slow step for every bit of distance Maura covered. It stayed on her, mocking whatever progress she thought she was making with ease. And all the time, jerking its head roughly from side to side like a frantic Jack in the box.
It stood impassively behind her as she reached up, struggling against the protests of her damaged body. She grabbed the phone from its cradle on the counter.
She dialed while the shape observed.
Gemma picked up.
"Gemma!" Maura shouted, "I'm sorry. I would have called your brother and sister but ... They don't want to talk to me anymore. I need help. Call 911. I need you and Bill to come as quickly as you can, there's a man here and –"
"Is it there to finish what dad started?" Gemma asked coolly, cruelly, on the other end of the phone. "I hope he ruins you, mom. I hope he digs into your stomach and pulls out the guts you never showed when daddy was beating us to hell and back!"
Click
The shape shrugged.
Maura wept.
"I was a good mother," Maura said. "I did everything I could for my kids. I never let anything like that happen if I could stop it –"
The shape held a silencing finger up. A seam etched itself across its dark skull, horizontally, where someone might have a mouth. It stretched its jaw until the seam split and popped open. Teeth grew, set in a mouth that was far too wide and far too large.
The shape laughed. It was an explosion of distortion, high and low.
The sound pounded Maura's ears. Battered them. Beat them. She couldn't think. She could barely breathe. Her chest felt tight.
The black tentacles that whipped on the shape's back began to slither along the floor toward her. They covered her. Enveloped her.
The shape chittered as its tendrils engulfed Maura.
***
Gemma and Bill walked up the short set of steps that led to Maura's house.
"I don't know why she isn't answering the phone," Gemma said. "She's always up by eight or nine."
Bill said, "Maybe her night cap was more cap than night."
"Don't be an ass," Gemma said. She elbowed him. "I just want to make sure she's all right."
Bill put both hands up in a stop gesture, "OK, you're right. Maybe she's just in the tub or something. Your mom's a tough old bird. It'd take more than a slip or tumble to put her down."
"Yeah, she is." Gemma knocked on the door. "Mom? Mom!"
Gemma waited a heartbeat and then began to knock again. She looked to Bill pleadingly.
He got the message. "I'll check the back door." He jogged off.
Gemma covered the tops of her eyes with her hand. She tried peering in through the door's slim windows. It was dark inside, which wasn't a good sign. She knew her mother was usually up and reading by now. Or doing something. And that involved keeping the front door open for a breeze and the lights inside on so she could look at her books.
A black blur ran across the window.
Gemma shrieked and tumbled backward.
She gathered herself. Approached the front door again. Peered in again.
Nothing. Stillness. Dim darkness.
Gemma began to knock, frenzied. "Mom! Mom are you there?!
"Mom are you OK?!"
A shape. Rising slowly in the living room. It seemed to pour from the shadows.
A black silhouette. Dark the way a black hole is: Something that eats light.
Gemma's chest filled with ice.
The figure approached the front door.
"Please be a neighbor checking on my mom or something," Gemma whispered. "Please be a friend. Please."
She pounded. "Let me in! This is my mother's house and I don't know who you are but you better goddamn let me in or I will call the cops!"
Some of the neighbors started to stare. Others who were walking down the street stopped and watched, unsure of what was happening.
Gemma ignored them.
She resumed her pounding. "Where is my mom?"
She took a half-step back and waited.
The figure at the door bent down. It put its head at the glass on the other side.
"That's right. Show me your face, asshole," Gemma said. "I want to know who I'm dealing with."
Static filled her ears. A horrible, squealing white noise. Blaring from the radio inside. She looked instinctively at the living room windows to her side, behind which she knew the radio sat.
When she looked back at the door window, she screamed.
There, behind the glass, floated two bright blue eyes.
Angry, horrible eyes in a sea of total darkness.
She stumbled and fell. In her ears and mind, nothing but sonic hell. She beat the sides of her head with her hands. And after struggling to collect herself, she turned to the locals who had stopped to watch. She hollered, "Call 911! Call 911 right now!"
A few scattered. A few approached. A few pulled out their cell phones.
When Gemma stood again, the shape gone.
Bill stood in the doorway. He said, "You don't want to come inside."
***
The police in Forest Hills were fast, at least.
Gemma sat on the steps of her mother's house, giving her statement. Bill wrapped his arm around her. He tried to support her while giving his own statement.
They had talked to Maura on the phone, yes. Yesterday. She seemed fine, only worried about her radio frizzing out. Was there anyone who would want to hurt Maura? No, of course not. Everyone liked her. Loved her. She was a kind old lady who minded her own business and liked to read. That was all.
No signs of forced entry. Nothing stolen.
The police didn't have a clue. Judging from the violence done to the body, the pieces missing, the blood ...
But nothing valuable was taken. Door lock unbroken.
It had to have been someone she knew. Or a true sadist. Or both.
***
Gemma and Bill sat in their car, not ready to leave. Both cried.
Bill because of what he'd seen in the kitchen.
Gemma because ...
They held each other, saying nothing.
Bill lit a cigarette and offered it to Gemma.
She grabbed it and took a few puffs before talking. "I don't even know. I just ... Why? She protected me and Michael and Ann from that monster of a father I had. She did everything she could."
"I know," Bill said. "You told me. Even after…" His voice trailed, lost in a family history that was fortunately not his own.
"She couldn't handle it." Gemma handed the cigarette back. "It ruined her. Evil piece of shit though my dad was, my mom just couldn't admit it. Something broke in her head."
"Guilt, probably."
"Guilt?"
"Over his death. Told me first time we got drunk together. Second date. Decades ago. You said she snapped and hit him with a pan when he got to beating on you one day. Told the cops he'd fallen down the stairs. Got a bump he just never woke up from."
Gemma stayed quiet. As though she had forgotten that particular piece of family history.
Bill curled an arm around her. "He was a monster. He deserved what he got. You should be happy that your mother protected you as well as she did. Without her –" he paused "– without her, you might not be here. I might not be with you. And we might not have two beautiful children at home waiting for us."
Gemm
a smiled at that. She dug her face into Bill's neck.
He kissed her forehead. "Your mother was a strong woman. And we'll remember her that way."
Gemma nodded.
They held each other, fighting back sobs.
***
From the attic of Maura's house, between the slats, James watched his daughter.
The radio played on.
William Vitka is a journalist and author. He's written for CBSNews.com, Stuff Magazine, GameSpy, On Spec Magazine and The Red Penny Papers to name a few. His debut novel, INFECTED, was published by Graveside Tales in late 2012. His anthology of short stories, THE SPACE WHISKEY DEATH CHRONICLES, was published at the crack of 2013 by Curiosity Quills. He lives in New York City.
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