Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (12 page)

Fiona is determined to finish her tour and she walks downstairs, walks through the first floor, into the kitchen, ignoring Percy, and then down into the basement. Go to
BASEMENT
.

Fiona is still reenacting the night her mother died in her bedroom and she goes back to the bathroom. Go to
BATHROOM
.

Fiona doesn’t have to go to the basement. She leaves the house. Go to
LEAVING THE HOUSE
.

BASEMENT

Fiona does a lap around the basement sometimes holding her hands above her head or tight against her body so that she won’t brush up against the forgotten boxes and sawhorses and piles of wood and roof shingles, and careful to not go near Dad’s work area (off limits) with its bitey tools and slippery sawdust, but she has to go fast as Sam is counting and if she doesn’t make it back to the stairs before he counts to twenty he kills the light (at some point he’ll kill the light anyway). Fiona follows Mom to the silver, cow-sized freezer and watches her struggle to lift out a frozen block of meat. Sam places his green army men on top of the dryer and they make bets about which plastic man will stay on the longest and Fiona doesn’t care if she loses because she loves smelling the warm, soft, humid dryer exhaust. Dad has been in the basement all day and they haven’t eaten dinner and Sam is not there (she forgets where Sam is, but he’s not in the house) and Mom has been gone for exactly one year and Fiona doesn’t call out Dad’s name and instead creeps down the basement stairs as quietly as she can and the only light on in the basement is the swinging bulb in Dad’s work area, and a static-tinged radio plays Motown, and Fiona can’t see Dad or his work area from the bottom of the stairs, only the light, so she sneaks in the dark over past the washer/dryer and the freezer, and Dad sits on his stool, his back is to her, his legs splayed out, his right arm pistons up and down like he’s hammering a nail but there’s no hammering a nail sound, and he’s breathing heavy, and there are beer cans all over his table, and she says Dad, are we having dinner? even though she knows she should not say anything and just go back up the stairs and find something to eat, and he jumps up from off the chair (back still turned to her), beer cans fall and a magazine flutters to the dirty floor (and if it’s not the exact same magazine, it’s like one of the naked-girl magazines she found in Sam’s room) and so do photos of Mom, and they are black and white photos of her and she is by herself and she is young and laughing and she is on the beach, running toward the camera with her arms over her head, and Fiona has always loved those pictures of her Mom on the beach, and Dad’s shirt is untucked and hanging over his unbuckled pants and instead of getting mad or yelling he talks like Sam might talk when he’s in trouble, a little boy voice, asking what she’s doing down here, and he picks up the magazine and the pictures and he doesn’t turn around to face her, and then she asks what was he doing, and he slumps back onto his stool and cries, and then he starts throwing the beer cans (empty and full) off of the wall, and Fiona runs out of the basement in less than twenty seconds. Sam says that the ghost of every person who ever lived in the house eventually goes to the basement and that some houses have so many ghosts in their basements that they line the walls and they’re stacked like cords of wood.

Fiona has finally seen all of the ghosts and spent enough time with them, and she can now leave the house. Go to
LEAVING THE HOUSE
.

Fiona goes back up all the stairs to stand in front of her parent’s bedroom door. Go to
PARENTS’ BEDROOM DOOR
.

LEAVING THE HOUSE

It’s colder now than it was when she arrived. Fiona walks to her car and won’t allow herself to stop and turn and stare at the house. Even with the visit cut short, she knows the ghosts are not trapped in the house, not bound to both the permanence and impermanence of place, as she foolishly hoped. The ghosts do not follow behind her, in a polite single-file, Pied Piper line to be catalogued, and then archived and forgotten. The ghosts are with her and will be with her, always. It is not a comfort because she will not allow it to be a comfort. How can she? As always, Fiona is too hard on herself, and she remains her very own ghost that scares her the most.

Fiona does not forgive herself. Go to
THE FRONT DOOR
.

Fiona returns to the house. Go to
THE FRONT DOOR
.

LEAVING THE HOUSE

It’s colder now than it was when she arrived. Fiona walks to her car and won’t allow herself to stop and turn and stare at the house. She knows the ghosts are not trapped in the house, not bound to both the permanence and impermanence of place, as she once foolishly hoped. The ghosts do not follow behind her, in a polite single-file Pied Piper line to be catalogued, and then archived and forgotten. The ghosts are with her, have always been with her, and continue to be with her, and maybe that can be a comfort, a confirmation, if she’ll just let it. Fiona was ten-years-old when Mom died from colon cancer. Her father died of cystic fibrosis thirty-seven years later. Dad never remarried and moved to Florida when he got sick and Fiona wrote him letters (he wrote back until he became too weak to do so) and she talked to him every other day on the phone and she spent three of her four weeks of vacation visiting him, and her lovely brother Sam cared for Dad during the last two years of his life. Poor Sam died of pneumonia after suffering a series of strokes five years ago. She doesn’t know what to do so she starts talking. She says to her father (who she knew for much longer and so much more intimately than her mother, yet somehow it feels like she didn’t know him as well, as though the glut of father-data confuses and contradicts) I’m sorry that we let every day be more awkward and formal than they should’ve been and I’m sorry I never told you that I don’t blame you for anything you did or said in grief, I never did, and I want to say, having out-lived my Marcie, that I understand. Then she says to Mom (who she only knew for ten years, less, really, in terms of her ever-shrinking timeline of memory, and of course, somehow, more) I’m sorry I didn’t stay, I wish I stayed with you, and I can stay with you now if you want me to. Fiona cries old tears, the ones drudged from a bottomless well of a child’s never ending grief. And she cries at the horror and beauty of passed time. And she chides herself for being a sentimental old fool despite having given herself permission to be one. As always, Fiona is too hard on herself, and she remains her very own ghost that scares her the most.

Fiona is still turned away from the house and she feels fingers pulling on the back of her coat, trying to drag her back into the house to go through it all again. Fiona still cannot forgive herself for not staying in her parents’ bedroom with her mother until the end. She fears her mother’s end (all ends for that matter) are cruelly eternal and that her mother is still there alone and waiting for Fiona to finally and forever come back. Go to
THE FRONT DOOR
.

Fiona is still turned away from the house and she feels fingers pulling on the back of her coat, trying to drag her back into the house to go through it all again, or maybe pull her away from everything, pull her away, finally, until she’s hopelessly lost. But she doesn’t want to be lost either. Fiona walks around the car, tracing the cold, metal frame with one hand, to the driver’s side door, and gets in the car and starts the engine which turns over in its tired mechanical way, and she shifts into first gear. The tires turn slowly, but they do turn. Go to
THE END
.

THE END

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR, EVERYTHING CHANGES

Damien Angelica Walters

Hannah opens her bedroom window, wincing at the low creak it makes, and pauses with one leg over the sill. A pile of dirty laundry sits at the foot of her bed, One Direction posters hang on the walls, and her laptop is open, but turned off, on her desk. She hasn’t dared turn it on for days; the messages coming in on her phone are more than enough.

Dark smudges, the shadows of her mom’s feet, creep along the floor beneath the door. They linger, and Hannah pulls her leg back inside, worrying an already ragged cuticle between her teeth. Part of her wants to open the door and let her mom in, wants to let the truth spill from her lips like vomit, wants to tell her everything, no matter what she says, no matter what happens after, but she can’t make her legs or mouth move because the other part of her knows it’s too late.

Her phone vibrates and tears burn in her eyes. The monsters are relentless. No need to look at the message; she knows what it says. She deleted a lot of them when it started, but now she doesn’t even bother. Her phone vibrates again and she pinches the inside of her cheek between her teeth. It’s Friday night, almost ten o’clock, and weekends are the worst.

The shadow feet beneath her door move, pause, and move again, moving away. Hannah takes a deep breath, shoves her phone in the pocket of her hoodie, and gives her room one last look.

***

Leanne paces in the living room, fingertips to temple, as though she can hold back the ache nestling there. Hannah’s upstairs in her bedroom, and while Leanne wants to go and apologize, she knows her daughter well enough to know it would go over as well as a fart in church. They both need time to cool down. To breathe.

This isn’t the first time they’ve argued—life with a thirteen-year-old is anything but bucolic—but it’s the worst thus far. And prompted by such a silly thing, too. Leanne squeezes her hands into fists, releases, squeezes again.

Would you please empty the dishwasher? A simple request that tornadoed into tears and stomping feet, and then the slinging of silverware into the drawer so fast and hard the clatter rattled Leanne’s teeth.

“What is wrong with you?” Leanne asked, knowing her tone of voice was too sharp, but knowing too late.

Hannah turned with a fistful of spoons. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

This time, Leanne kept her tone gentle. “You’ve been quiet for days. You haven’t been hanging out with your friends or doing much of anything other than staying in your room. Did something happen?”

Hannah shrugged one shoulder.

“You can talk to me if you want.”

Another shrug, then Hannah said, “I’m not hanging out with my friends because they’ve been calling me names.”

And Leanne laughed. It wasn’t that she found it funny, but Hannah’s response was unexpected and petulant, the words something out of grade school. Leanne bit back the laugh a moment too late, and Hannah exploded. F5. She threw the spoons across the counter, her mouth twisted, her face turned bright red, and she yelled, “You wouldn’t understand. You’re too old.”

Silence hovered in the air and as Leanne opened her mouth to say
I’m sorry
, a spoon balanced on the edge of the counter fell to the floor. Hannah’s words came out into a rush too fast for Leanne to follow, drowning her apology in chaos. She heard
everyone hates me
and
I hate it here
and
I want to go home
.

Leanne stood immobile, desperately wishing David were home and hating herself a bit for it. But he’d be able to turn things around. With Hannah, he’s always been able to. When she was small and afraid of monsters hiding in her closet, he’d open the closet with one hand while brandishing a toy lightsaber in the other. He’d stab and swing the lightsaber at the shoes and hanging clothes—while making a reasonable facsimile of the distinctive lightsaber sound—until the hangers were dancing on the bar and Hannah’s fear gave way to laughter.

At a lull in Hannah’s tirade, Leanne said, “Stop being so dramatic. Whatever happened will all blow over and they’ll stop. Act like it doesn’t matter and it will stop even faster. In a few years, you’ll barely remember it. It isn’t the end of the world.”

Hannah burst into tears and ran to her room, stomping her feet and slamming her bedroom door, and Leanne sagged against the kitchen counter.

Now, she pours a glass of wine but leaves it untasted on the coffee table. She regrets what she said to Hannah, regretted it as soon as the words were in the air, but everything will be okay once they’ve both calmed down. Everything will be fine.

***

Hannah climbs from her window onto the porch roof and shimmies down one of the support columns. Luckily, the porch light isn’t on—it burned out a few nights ago and no one’s replaced it yet—and it’s late enough that none of the neighbors, all old people, are outside. Once across the lawn, she doesn’t look back.

Invisible hands in her chest squeeze tight as she reaches the end of the street, and she wipes tears from her cheeks with a sleeve. All the tears in the world won’t change things, and the monsters like it when she cries; they feed off the salt and the sorrow.

The neighborhood is a series of culs-de-sac jutting off a main road like a series of tumors. She shoves her hands in her pockets and hunches her shoulders. It’s early March and still chilly, colder than she thought it would be.

When she passes the cul-de-sac where Larissa lives, she pulls up her hood, hunches even more. Even though Larissa lives at the top, she doesn’t want to take the risk of being seen. Her phone vibrates and she jumps and walks faster, a bitter taste in the back of her throat.