Anything Can Be Dangerous (28 page)

Carrie opened her door with a grunt,
jumped out of the car and tossed her photo-album on the seat. The
pavement felt hard beneath her feet. The book bounced and fell open
to a random page. The page had a photo of Carrie sitting on a swing
with Stephenie standing behind her.

“
Wait a minute babe,”
Stephenie said, reaching for her ignition keys. She thought she
heard the words,
Okay, mom
.
But then she watched Carrie shaking her head in total
disagreement.

“
I can’t,” Carrie shouted.
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom super-duper or I’m going to make an
uh-oh in my pants!”

Carrie hustled towards the restaurant
like she was in a hurry, leaving the car door wide open. She
squeezed her knees together and struggled with the restaurant door,
which seemed to weigh a thousand pounds or more. She pulled on the
handle with all her might; in the end she managed to wiggle herself
inside. Just.

Stephenie turned the car off,
unlatched her seatbelt and felt it slide across her waist. She
unlocked her door, swung the door open and stepped outside, leaving
her keys dangling in the ignition. The sun had begun to set but the
temperature was still hot. It was muggy out; the air felt thicker
than most days.

Her eyes scanned the parking lot for
an attendant. Didn’t see one.

Across the road a single bungalow sat
before the backdrop of undeveloped land like it had been misplaced.
It had dark windows and was made of brick. It had a long driveway
on the right hand side. There was no garage, few trees. Thick green
grass was growing long. There was no sidewalk in front of the
building, no curb either. The grass just shrank away, diminishing
into rocks, pebbles and sand until it came to the clearly defined
edge of the highway, which was old but in good condition, faded but
not overly weathered.

She dismissed the house and all the
details that defined it. She walked towards the gas pump and looked
over each shoulder, once again trying to locate the man in charge.
She didn’t see him. There was a greased-out gas-shack attached to
the restaurant. Maybe he was there? Or perhaps he was picking his
ass inside the restaurant, ordering coffee and making time with the
waitress. That seemed about right. For a moment she wondered if the
attendant might actually be a woman, but for reasons unknown the
idea didn’t seemed to fit. So assuming the attendant was a man,
where the hell was he?

The attendant’s hiding place was
unknown, a lackluster mystery.

Didn’t really matter, she supposed.
She knew how to pump gas and if the attendant didn’t like it he
could suck on a lemon and piss up a rope.

After she unscrewed her car’s gas cap,
she lifted the nozzle and switched the pump on by lifting an
ancient looking metal lever. She stuck the nozzle into her tank and
squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. She opened her fingers,
waited a moment and squeezed the trigger again. Still
nothing.

“
Huh,” she said, with an
eyebrow lifted and her tongue peeking out between her
teeth.

Stephenie flicked the gas-pump switch
on and off a number of times and squeezed the trigger a number of
times and still nothing worked. She returned the nozzle to its
place and walked around in a circle.

It was a hot day. Nice, but
hot.

She waited ten seconds that seemed
like ten hours and walked towards the restaurant feeling like a
failure.

Between the entrance to the gas
station and the restaurant’s main door was a patio swing made of
wood. The swing could hold three people, two comfortably. Sitting
on the swing was a thin girl with dark hair. Her name was Christina
Split; she wore an attractive brown dress covered in white polka
dots. The dress looked retro. She looked about eighteen. Stephenie
noticed her earlier but ignored her because she was clearly not the
person in charge.

Christina––who had been quite
literally, twiddling her thumbs––lifted a hand from her lap and
waved, offering a sad little smile.

Stephenie waved back. She considered
saying ‘hi’ but didn’t. Instead she pulled the restaurant door open
and stepped inside while nodding her head and making a face that
felt comfortable to wear but might have been humorous to see. Bells
rang. Not the electric kind, but the old-fashioned, ‘bells hanging
above the door’ kind that made every day seem like Christmas.
Carrie didn’t open the door with enough gusto to make them cry out,
but Stephenie had. Then the ringing faded and the door closed
behind her. Stephenie’s eyes popped open. Her heart started
pounding, her breathing became labored and she thought she might be
sick.

The restaurant was a
slaughterhouse.

The customers and staff were
splattered everywhere. They were slumped over in the booths and in
pieces on the floor. Body parts were on the tables and chairs. The
walls were soaked with blood. The carnage was nearly
immeasurable.

Stephenie stumbled; her mouth became
dry.

Spinning, the world was
spinning.

She put her hands on her knees and
felt her stomach heave. Somehow she held it in. She wasn’t sick on
the floor but she wanted to be. Not that being sick would fix
anything. It wouldn’t. And her view wasn’t better now that she was
crouched over like an umpire at a ball game; it was
worse.

She was looking at a
corpse.

The corpse wore a yellow waitress
uniform that consisted of a loose button shirt, glossy black shoes
and a miniskirt. The dead woman was twenty-five years old, give or
take a year. Her nametag said SUSAN; her head was twisted awkwardly
towards the door. Her skull had been cracked apart like an
egg.

Stephenie could see the woman’s brain
just as clearly as she could count the bone fragments lying on top
of it. And still, she held her nausea at bay. She held it because
she didn’t want to vomit on the girl. She didn’t dare move, fearing
her stomach would revolt against such action, leading her into a
bought of illness that would last fifteen minutes or
more.

She closed her eyes and squeezed them
tight.

When she opened them nothing had
changed. She was getting a real close look at this waitress named
Susan, whose eyes were wide open, shockingly open, dreadfully open.
Her face held an expression of terror so absolute she seemed to
have died of fright before the killing blow had been able to claim
her.

In time, Stephenie lifted herself to
an upright position.

There was a puddle of blood around
Susan’s head and tiny footprints were in it.
Tiny
footprints.
Carrie’s
footprints.

“
Where’s Carrie?” she
whispered.

Then she closed her eyes, telling
herself she was trapped inside a dream, a
terrible
dream––a nightmare in fact. More than
anything else, that’s what she wanted to believe. Otherwise she’d
need to face the fact that she was standing in a horrific bloodbath
and her five-year-old daughter was suddenly gone.

4

The scene was tranquil. Everything was
calm. The customers were eating and socializing, the staff was
working and everyone was happy. There was no blood on the walls, no
bodies slumped over in the booths, no body parts lying amputated on
the floor. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing
disturbing. Nothing to suggest there was a problem big enough to
have people shaking their heads in disbelief. It was a diner, just
a simple diner with no strings attached. It had stools with red
seat covers, which were bolted to the floor in front of the
counter. It had booths with divisional walls that were a little
more than waist high, giving privacy but not
too much
privacy. It had cheap paintings on the
walls between the dark windows. Florescent lights buzzed in the
ceiling and ceiling fans spun below. It was the type of place that
gets labeled a greasy spoon and often times deserves the label. It
smelled like coffee, toast and bacon. The smell alone was enough to
get your stomach rumbling and your waistline expanding.

Stephenie felt a tug on her finger.
She heard a voice. It was a child’s voice, her daughter’s
voice.

The voice said, “Mom?”

Sitting inside a booth in the center
of the diner was a woman named Angela Mezzo. She was a beautiful
Italian lady with dark hair and an exotic appearance. Her lips were
full and her cheekbones were high. She was roughly the same age as
Stephenie, twenty-nine, maybe thirty. But unlike Stephenie her
youthful exterior was no longer present. Not in a bad way, in a
good way. She had womanly features that weren’t restricted to the
curves of her body, but on her face too. In contrast, Stephenie’s
appearance suggested that she might carry her inner-girl around
with her until the day she died.

Angela lifted a coffee mug from the
table with delicate, manicured hands. She swallowed a sip of coffee
without making a sound.

The mug had a yellow happy face
painted on the side. It was the same yellow happy face that had
been produced and reproduced a hundred million times and can be
found on cups and glasses in dollar stores around the
world.

Stephenie felt another tug on her
finger. She heard the voice again: “Mom?”

Angela sat the mug on the table in
front of her. She started to grin, but the grin sat on her face
wrong somehow, like it didn’t belong there, like it belonged
somewhere else.

Stephenie’s eyes narrowed. She had
seen that smile before but didn’t know where.

Angela’s grin thickened, growing hard
across her features like old gravy left forgotten on the
stove.

Now Stephenie knew.

The smile was lifted from her late
husband Hal. It was the same smile he made in her dreams, in her
nightmares. Not when he was falling, but the moment before he hit
the sign that said DANGER and his body was severed at the waist.
But why was Hal’s smile on Angela’s face? It had to be a
coincidence.

Angela began changing. Her eyes turned
blacker than oil and her mouth crept open like a squeaky door in a
haunted house. Her head tilted, hair swooped in front of her face
and her skin became pale. For a moment Stephenie thought she might
crumble into dust.

Then came a third tug on her
finger.

The tug seemed more urgent this time,
but still, it was gentle. A child’s hand was wrapped around her
finger and Stephenie knew it was Carrie’s hand, which was good news
indeed because if Carrie was pulling her finger Stephenie knew
exactly where the girl was hiding and there would be nothing more
to worry about, nothing at all. Nothing except the cold hard fact
that a room full of strangers was chopped into a million pieces and
somebody was responsible. Strangers don’t kill themselves when they
step out for a bite to eat––no way, no chance, no how.

But the room
wasn’t
filled with dead people. The room was just
the way you’d expect it to be: the staff were bustling about and
the customers were enjoying their meals.

Except for Angela Mezzo.

Angela was sitting at the table with
her happy face mug in front. Her eyes were black and her mouth hung
open like someone had snagged it with a hook on a string and given
the string a good yank.

Now she was about to say
something.

Stephenie didn’t want to hear it, not
a single word. Once Angela started talking everything would be so
bad she’d want to scream.

She felt another tug on her finger.
Then the hand slipped away and that was the end of it. The finger
tugging was over. If Carrie had been there she was gone now. She
was gone to wherever she may be.

Stephenie was alone. Alone in the room
with the cheerful people that didn’t notice Angela’s eyes had
turned black and the color was draining from her skin. She was
alone in the room with a ghoul that was opening her mouth so
horrifically wide that a rat could crawl from her throat with room
to spare.

Now Angela did speak. She did. And
when she spoke it wasn’t a woman’s voice Stephenie heard. It was a
child’s voice. It was Carrie’s voice. Carrie’s voice was creeping
free of that cavernous void that needed to be shut.

The voice said, “Mom?”

And Stephenie opened her
eyes.

5

Angela Mezzo was indeed dead. Her
lifeless body was lying awkwardly across the table. Her fingers
were wrapped around the coffee mug like she was about to take a
drink. The yellow happy face on the mug smiled in spite of the
carnage around it.

Stephenie lifted her stare from
Angela, but everywhere she looked there was a new horror waiting to
be seen. The restaurant was a killing box, simple as that. It was a
killing box that had been exhaustively used.

She said, “Carrie?” Her voice sounded
weak and shrouded in terror. “Where are you?”

She stepped forward. Her foot brushed
against Susan’s corpse. A spike of fear and panic gripped her with
such strength she thought she’d faint. She turned quickly and
reached for the door. Her foot slipped in the blood, not enough to
knock her off balance; just enough to let her know what she was
standing in. The walls seemed nearer; the ceiling seemed
lower.