Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (10 page)

Nikilie felt something move, deep within her bones. Her marrow uncurled and stretched. Something bloomed. It felt like Hibiscus.

“Yes,” she whispered, and her voice didn’t shake. It felt
alive.
It climbed from her throat and wound around Michael’s hand, searching for sunlight.

“Beneath your skin, which is indeed fine, and subcutaneous layers of fat, there are veins and ropes of nerves. Meat and muscle. All of this excess. So much bloat! Ah, but under that? At the very core of you?”

If her eyes were alight, then his were on fire. They burned. Sparked. Two delirious gorgeous infernos of famine and desire, burning away the refuse of her body to get to the bare essence underneath.

He saw the basics of her, the very base, and that’s what he wanted. Not the trappings. Not the prettiness. He wanted the deep and dark and ugly. The most honest and primal parts.

You are everything I ever wanted,
she told him. She didn’t say a word, but she felt his grip tighten on her bony wrist and knew he understood.

Her hand shook, but not in self-loathing this time. It was a wondrous thing. She cleared her throat.

“Could you hand me my purse?”

He did, his eyes never leaving hers. They radiated sunlight, and she felt a physical itch under the skin on her wrist.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a small box. Inside was a tissue-wrapped razor.

“Just in case,” she said, and when she smiled, the island erupted in full bloom.

He was hungry, starving, and watched her like any predator watches its prey. It was, perhaps, the first time she had ever desired to be consumed.

The razor glistened in the light like ice in a polar cave. The aurora borealis held between her fingers. A wishing star fallen to earth and seeking to sup from her veins.

“Shall I feed it?”

Nikilie’s voice held the slightest hint of teasing, but underneath the playfulness, it carried so much more.

Shall I?Shall I do this now, here with you, and will we both accept the consequences that come with it?

He didn’t reply, but touched her face softly. He traced her jawline, felt down her neck, and ran his fingers across her collarbone. That’s where he let his fingers rest, and the warmth of them felt volcanic to Nikilie.

“There,” she said, and placed her hand atop his. “This bone specifically belongs to you. It’s yours, always.”

“You know I’ll treasure it,” he said, and his voice was thick and heavy.

“I know you will. You genuinely will. You’re the only one who loves me from the inside out.”

The first cut went deeper than planned, the blade ice cold and giving her that momentary instant of surprise. Her mind went blank, her body confused, her nerves short-circuiting and her mouth curling in a soft “oh” of surprise. Then the pain hit, and she closed her eyes against the glorious rush.

Michael sank to the ground and held his arms out to her. She crawled into his lap, and he wrapped himself around her. Blood soaked into his sweater.

“Are you all right, my love?” he asked, and her lips curved in response.

“I have never felt so alive,” she answered, and cut again.

No holding back. No fits of guilt or shame, of wondering how she should hide her wounds, of cradling her head in her bloody hands and sobbing. She only felt euphoria. Excitement. She was unearthing the deepest, best parts of herself, and most precious of all, she wasn’t doing it alone.

She grew too weak to cut with the force necessary, and she blinked sunny, Caribbean eyes at Michael.

“Would you?”

She spoke so softly that he leaned forward to hear her, but with such love that her words reverberated through him.

“Of course.”

He guided her fingers, and they both gasped as something green and fresh unfurled from her vein.

“I knew it,” she breathed.

She was fading fast, her voice nearly gone, and Michael helped her go deeper, discovering the cosmos and Garden of Eden hidden away all of these years. Before the light in her eyes went out, she wanted to see everything, to see the value and gold hidden at her very center.

“Hang on just a little longer, love,” he said,and worked furiously until lilies spilled from her wrists, and heliconias, orange and gay, and vines, and all of the flowers she had ever seen. Cereus bloomed furiously, reminding her of the moon at night.

“You make me feel not so alone,” she said, and then the vines overtook her, covering her frail neck, twisting into her mouth and twirling over her eyes. Petals bloomed and fell. Michael was left holding something delicate and wonderful, beautiful from within as well as without.

“You’ll never be alone. Never. I’ll always, always be with you. I promise.”

A girl missing in the city didn’t retain the public’s attention for long. But Michael was a man who cherished a special thing, the inner wholeness of a person. He tenderly unwrapped flowers and leaves until he found skin and flesh, and then he looked deeper. He cut, scraped, and boiled until he was left with bone. It was white and fresh and pure, with life blooming from the marrow. He held each flowering vertebra gently in his hands, and kissed each and every rib.

His garden was exquisite, a thing of wonder and beauty. Flowers bloomed from eye sockets, thrived from femurs. Nikilie was broken down into the most astounding of parts. True to his word, Michael never forgot her. He watered her bones daily.

A HAUNTED HOUSE IS A WHEEL UPON WHICH SOME ARE BROKEN

Paul Tremblay

ARRIVAL

Fiona arranged for the house to be empty and for the door to be left open. She has never lived far from the house. It was there, a comfort, a threat, a reminder, a Stonehenge, a totem to things that actually happened to her. The house was old when she was a child. That her body has aged faster than the house (there are so many kinds of years; there are dog-years and people-years and house-years and geological-years and cosmic-years) is a joke and she laughs at it, with it, even though all jokes are cruel. The house is a New England colonial, blue with red and white shutters and trim, recently painted, the first floor windows festooned with carved flower boxes. She stands in the house’s considerable shadow. She was once very small, and then she became big, and now she is becoming smaller again, and that process is painful but not without joy and an animal-sense of satisfaction that the coming end is earned. She thinks of endings and beginnings as she climbs the five steps onto the front porch. Adjacent to the front door and to her left is a white historical placard with the year 1819 and the house’s name. Her older brother, Sam, said that you could never say the house’s name out loud or you would wake up the ghosts, and she never did say the name, not even once. The ghosts were there anyway. Fiona never liked the house’s name and thought it was silly, and worse, because of the name preexisting and now post-existing it means that the house was never hers. Despite everything, she wanted it to always be hers.

Fiona hesitates to open the front door. Go to
THE FRONT DOOR
.

Fiona decides to not go inside the house after all and walks back to her car. Go to
LEAVING THE HOUSE
.

THE FRONT DOOR

It’s like Fiona has always and forever been standing at the front door. She places a hand on the wood and wonders what is on the other side, what has changed, what has remained the same. Change is always on the other side of a door. Open a door. Close a door. Walk in. Walk out. Repeat. It’s a loop, or a wheel. She doesn’t open the door and instead imagines a practice-run; her opening the door and walking through the house, stepping lightly into each of the rooms, careful not to disturb anything, and she is methodical in itemizing and identifying the ghosts, and she feels what she thinks she is going to feel, and she doesn’t linger in either the basement or her parent’s bedroom, and she eventually walks out of the house, and all of this is still in her head, and she closes the door, then turns around, stands in the same spot she’s standing in now, and places a hand on the wood and wonders what is on the other side, what has changed, what has remained the same.

Fiona opens the door. Go to
ENTRANCEWAY
.

Fiona is not ready to open the door. Go to
THE FRONT DOOR
.

Fiona decides to walk back to the car and not go inside the house. Go to
LEAVING THE HOUSE
.

ENTRANCEWAY

Fiona gently pushes the front door closed, watches it nestle into the frame, and listens for the latching mechanism to click into place before turning her full attention to the house. The house. The house. The house. Sam said because the house was so old and historical (he pronounced it his-store-ickle so that it rhymed with pickle) there was a ghost in every one of the rooms. He was right. The house is a ghost too. That’s obvious. That all the furniture, light fixtures, and decorations will be different (most of everything will be antique, or made to look antique; the present owners take their caretakers-of-a-living-museum role seriously) and the layout changed from when she lived here won’t matter because she’s not here to catalogue those differences. She’ll only have eyes for the ghost house. Fiona says, “Hello?” because she wants to hear what she sounds like in the house of the terrible now. She says hello again and her voice runs up the stairs and around banisters and bounces off plaster and crown molding and sconces, and she finds the sound of the now-her in the house pleasing and a possible anecdote to the poison of nostalgia and regret, so she says hello again, and louder. Satisfied with her re-introduction, Fiona asks, “Okay, where should we go first?”

Fiona turns to her right and walks into the living room. Go to
LIVING ROOM
.

Fiona walks straight ahead into the dining room. Go to
DINING ROOM
.

The weight of the place and its history and her history is too much; Fiona abruptly turns around and leaves the house. Go to
LEAVING THE HOUSE
.

LIVING ROOM

Dad builds a fire and uses all the old newspaper to do it and pieces glowing orange at their tips break free and float up into the flue, moving as though they are alive and choosing flight. Fiona and Sam shuffle their feet on the throw rug and then touch the cast iron radiator, their static electric shocks so big at times, a blue arc is visible. Mom sits on the floor so that Fiona can climb onto the couch and jump onto her back. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. The fire is out and the two of them are by themselves and Sam pokes around in the ashes with a twig. Sam says that Little Laurence Montague was a chimney sweep, the best and smallest in the area, and he cleaned everyone’s chimney, but he got stuck and died in this chimney, so stuck, in fact, they would not be able to get his body out without tearing the house apart so the home owners built a giant fire that they kept burning for twenty-two days, until there was no more Little Laurence left, not even his awful smell. Sam says that you can see him, or parts of him anyway, all charred and misshapen, sifting through the ash, looking for his pieces, and if you aren’t careful, he’ll take a piece from you. Fiona makes sure to stay more than an arm’s length away from the fireplace. Of all the ghosts, Little Laurence scares her the most, but she likes to watch him pick through the ash, hoping to see him find those pieces of himself. There are so many.

Fiona curls into the dining room. Go to
DINING ROOM
.

Fiona walks to the kitchen. Go to
KITCHEN
.

This is already harder than she thought it was going to be; impossible, in fact. Fiona doesn’t think she can continue and leaves the house. Go to
LEAVING THE HOUSE
.

DINING ROOM

Fiona and Sam are under the table and their parents’ legs float by like branches flowing down a river. The floor boards underneath groan and whisper and they understand their house, know it as a musical instrument. Dad sits by himself and wants Fiona and Sam to come out from under the table and talk to him; they do and then he doesn’t know what to say or how to say it; her father is so young and she never realized how young he is. Mom isn’t there. She doesn’t want to be there. Sam says there was an eight-year-old girl named Maisy who had the strictest of parents, the kind who insisted children did not speak during dinner, and poor Maisy was choking on a piece of potato from a gloopy beef stew and she was so terrified of what her parents would do if she said anything, made any sort of noise, she sat and quietly choked to death. Sam says you can see her at the table sitting there with her face turning blue and her eyes as large and white as hard boiled eggs and if you get too close she will wrap her hands around your neck and you won’t be able to call out or say anything until it’s too late. Of all the ghosts, Maisy scares Fiona the most, and she watches in horror as Maisy sits at the table trying to be a proper girl.

Fiona walks straight ahead and into the kitchen. Go to
KITCHEN
.

Fiona turns right and walks into the living room. Go to
LIVING ROOM
.

Fiona by-passes the kitchen entirely and goes to the basement. Go to
BASEMENT
.

This is harder than she thought it was going to be; impossible, in fact. Fiona doesn’t think she can continue and leaves the house. Go to
LEAVING THE HOUSE
.