Malus Domestica (27 page)

“It is, or it isn’t. How can it
be
your house
and not be
your house?” Jo-elle blinked in recognition. “Wait.
Wait.
I
know
this house. I’ve sat at this table before. This is Annie Martine’s house. She used to babysit me and my brother when I was a little boy like you.” Now that he was out of danger, Jo-elle seemed to favor his right foot, using the kitchen counter as a crutch as he left the room.

Out in the hallway, he supported himself on the armrest of a chair. “Yeah, this mos’ definitely Annie’s house. You mean you livin here? I didn’t even know it was still for sale. I figured it would be fallin apart by now.”

“Is Annie Martine the witch that died here?”

Jo-elle eyed him. “Where you hear that?”

“My friend Pete told me.” Wayne stopped to rub his leg. The gauze wound around his left knee was so tight he couldn’t stand it, and his ankle felt plump, tender, like a big warm sausage. “He lives over in the trailer park. He said her husband pushed her down the stairs.”

“…I don’t know if I believe in witches, but I don’t speak ill of the dead. Annie was a good woman.”

He sat down in the chair. Wayne grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back up. “No, we can’t stay here. It’s not safe. I told you, there’s a monster here.”

“Just let me rest f’minute. I been upside-down for like, two hours. My head is spinnin.”

“No!”

“Little man, just cause I’m sittin here in a clearance-rack thong don’t mean I ain’t gonna slap you. I hurt myself fallin on the floor, and you makin it worse.” Jo-elle took his hand away, rubbing his wrist.

Wayne scowled and headed for the stairs. “Okay, then. …I’ll leave you here. You should—”

Deep, gutteral breathing rumbled along the hallway like an engine underwater,
grarararararauuuh,
and the floorboards groaned.

“You on
y’own!”
said Wayne, running for the foyer.

As soon as he got there, the hulking green-eyed shadow reached out of the living room doorway with those long, hairy arms.
“Oh!”
shrieked Jo-elle.
“What the Christ!”

Halfway up the switchback staircase, Wayne paused to make sure he wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t, because the lamp-eyed creature was crawling up the wall and across the ceiling at him like some kind of huge horrible spider-bear. Wayne screamed and fought to get up to the second floor, slipping, clawing at the steps, banging his knees.

Inhaling, the creature made a deep crooning foghorn noise—
“Hhhrrroooohh!”
—and crabbed over the edge of the landing. When Wayne reached the top of the stairs, it was already there waiting, crawling over the banister.

“Oh!” he just had time to shout, and then the creature was on him, mumbling, wet, reeking of mold and garbage.

The thing’s mouth widened, a pit cracking open a long head like a watermelon, and rows of slimy teeth glistened in that eerie sea-light from above. It leaned forward and took Wayne’s entire head in its jaws.

A leathery tongue pressed against his eyebrow, hot breath washing his face.

Clang!

The monster straightened, growling at Jo-elle, who stood over it with the rotary-phone in one hand. “It’s for
you,
bitch!” He brought the phone cradle down on that shaggy head again.
Clang!

Grateful for the distraction, Wayne clambered on his hands and knees across the landing.

Since the monster had cut him off before he could reach the cupola door that led back to the hospital and Leon, he fled down the hallway to the upstairs bathroom. Flinging the door open, Wayne was surprised and dismayed to find only a bathtub and a toilet.

He looked back just in time to see the deformed Sasquatch pin Jo-elle to the floor and rake fingernails across his bare chest. Blood pattered up the wall.

Gathering his feet, Jo-elle leg-pressed the creature’s chest, almost lifting it into the air, and pried himself free, loping after Wayne on all fours. They crowded into the bathroom and Jo-elle shut the door, locking the knob, as if that would help.

BANG!
The thing outside threw itself against the door. A cup of toothbrushes toppled into the sink.

The window over the tub was painted shut. Mysterious night lay opaque against the windowpane like black felt. “Now what?” asked Wayne, on the verge of hysterics. He ripped open the mirror.

Instead of a medicine cabinet, a dark living room gaped inside, viewed from a high angle some ten feet in the air. Huge plate-glass windows to the left showered the room in soft gray moonbeams.

Wayne climbed up on the sink and through the medicine cabinet. “Come on!”

On the other side, he stood on top of a refrigerator. Wayne climbed down onto the counter, stumbling over a panini press, and jumped down to linoleum. His new thong-bedecked friend leapt down after him and fell, swearing about his ankle.

The crawlspace they’d escaped through slammed shut, becoming a painting.

Bleeding on the floor, poor Jo-elle had a mini-breakdown, his hands flapping. “Mother of God and home of the brave, what in
the
hell
was
that?”

The kitchen lights came on, dazzling them both.

A blond man with a crutch under one arm and a pistol in the other trained his muzzle on them. A pretty woman with a shaved head stood next to him, and they were both in T-shirts and underwear.

“Joel?” asked the man.

Joel squinted. “Kenway?”

“The hell you doing in my kitchen at—” Kenway glanced at the microwave, ejecting the magazine from the pistol and racking the slide. A bullet flipped out and he caught it in his other hand. “—Two in the morning? …Butt-ass naked in hand-cuffs. With a little boy.”

Wayne’s eyes trickled down until they came to rest on the blond’s left leg, which ended in a nub just below the knee.

“What’s it look like, Cap’n Hooker?” demanded Joel, panting and grimacing, his hand over the lacerations on his chest. “I needed to borrow a cup of sugar.”

14

“A
ND
THAT
’
S
HOW
WE
ended up here,” said the kid. They were all clustered around the island in the kitchen, wide awake. Robin’s camera still stood at the end of the counter, recording his tale. Kenway made them all omelets and coffee while Joel and Wayne told their stories. His eyebrows stayed high and his forehead furrowed through most of it, but to his credit he never challenged them or made any disbelieving noises.

Wayne had traded his hospital gown for a sweater and a pair of cargo pants from Robin. They were feminine and a couple sizes too big, but it was a good look with his glasses. A ten-year-old hipster.

Joel was wearing a pair of Kenway’s jeans. With some alcohol, Neosporin, a bandage, and a bottle of breakfast stout, he was sore and bitchy but otherwise good as new. He’d only been nicked by the nail through the door, and his cuts weren’t as bad as they looked—more scratches than anything else, not quite bad enough to need stitches.

Robin walked around the apartment, looking through the boy’s ring like Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass, trying to detect anomalies. No such luck. It seemed that whatever the ring was capable of, only its owner was able to take advantage of it.

An engraving inside the ring said,
Together We’ll Always
Find a Way.

This was significant. Words hold power, and Robin knew from experience that text—whether engraved or printed—could absorb and retain or channel that power.

“I need to call my dad and let him know I’m all right,” said Wayne. “If he’s awake now, he’s probably really worried. Probably wondering where I am.” He sighed. “I don’t have my cellphone or I’d text him.”

Pouring herself a cup of coffee, Robin joined them at the island. She gave him her cellphone and the ring, and he typed in his dad’s number, pressing the phone to his ear.

“What troubles me the most,” she said to Kenway, “is that the Sasquatch-monster they said was hiding in my old house is…well, I’ve been seeing it for a long time. I’ve always thought it was a hallucination. A part of my schizophrenia.”

“Really?” He pushed an omelet in front of her.

“Yeah. I don’t know what to think about knowing someone else saw it too.” Robin sat there picking at it, carving off little bites and eating them in a daze of deep thought.

“I’m with friends, Dad,” Wayne was saying, trying to lay down some damage control. They could hear the mosquito-buzz of Leon Parkin shouting through the phone. “Yes, friends. No, not Pete. I’m fine, I’m fine. Something happened in the room and I ended up somewhere else. I mean, I don’t know. It was weird. Yes.”

His face scrunched up on one side and he screwed the heel of his hand into his eye sleepily.

“Dad, I can explain it better when you’re chilled out, okay?” A tear rolled down his face. “Hey. …I’m sorry. For making you worry.” The boy turned away from them, hugging himself, trying not to sob outright. “Do you forgive me?” Several quiet seconds passed. “I love you too, Dad.”

“Hey,” said Joel. “Tell him we’re gonna take you back to the hospital as soon as we get done eating.”

Wayne did so. “I’m sorry for making you worry,” he reiterated, his voice breaking. “Are you doin okay? Dad, you ain’t drinkin nothin, are you? …Don’t worry about me if that makes it harder. Yeah. I just don’t want…y’know?”

He hung up and gave the phone back to Robin. She took a sip of coffee and asked them, “So you said that the walls were green when you went into the old Underwood house?”

“The kitchen was burnt slap up,” said Joel. “And your mama’s old diner table was in there, too.”

“My mom painted the walls green when I was a kid. When they prosecuted my dad and I became a ward of the state, the city fixed it up and painted it blue.”

“Other than it bein burnt, it looked like it did when we was kids.” Joel gingerly explored the bandage taped to his chest. It was an adhesive combat bandage from Kenway’s old Army supplies, like a big square Band-Aid. “Man, this makes me glad I shave.”

Wayne made a face. “You shave your chest? …Do you shave your legs and
everything?”

“I don’t really consider this an appropriate topic of breakfast conversation.” Joel winced in mock offense and he tossed one leg over a knee, sitting back with his beer. “Is you always this rude?”

“That’s so
weird.”

“Little man, don’t be sassing your elders.”

Kenway scoffed. “You just got away from a serial killer and fought off Bigfoot, and you think a guy that shaves his balls is weird?”

They all burst out laughing, Wayne hunkering sheepishly over his food.

After gulping down breakfast, they loaded into Kenway’s truck and headed to the hospital. Robin rode in the back, wearing a thick jacket with the hood pulled over her head to protect her from the wind. It was still dark out—a little after three in the morning, according to her phone—and the autumn air bit her face. She squinted in the gale, holding the GoPro out. This would make good transitional footage. She wanted to monologue, but the snapping of the wind would make it impossible to hear.

As they pulled into the parking lot of Blackfield Medical, Leon Parkin came striding out the front door, followed by an old woman in a raggedy petticoat that seemed to be made out of swatches from the fabric section of Walmart.

Kenway was barely out of the driver’s seat when Leon marched up and started raining blows on him, cornering him inside the truck door.

Everyone exploded into movement, shouting, running to stop him. Joel and Robin got them separated and Leon threw his elbows, trying to shake them off. “Y’all motherfuckers take my son?” he raved, seething in the middle of their circle. White vapor coiled from his mouth. “Who
are
you? What
is
this?”

“Now wait—” Kenway began, putting up his hands. Blood trickled from his nose. Leon charged him again and Joel and Robin wrestled him away.

Wayne got out and ran to his dad. Leon clutched him against his side. “Get inside, son.”

“But Dad—”

“Get your ass inside and I’ll be in there in a minute.”

The boy looked up with a stern face that belonged on a grown man and pushed away. “Dad, I left on my own. It was an accident.”

“What
did I tell you?”

“No!” said Wayne, clenching his fists and shivering. He was limping again, his left foot a faint shade of purple. “I been helpin—I been, I been dealin with you, and things, you know, for long enough, Dad, and you owe me. I’ve always been there.
Always.
Even when you weren’t. So right now, I need you to listen.”

Stunned, Leon’s face softened as he seemed to see his son, really
see
him, his eyes wandering up and down Wayne’s strangely effeminate outfit.

“We
both
lost her, Dad. I hurt too. You know that?”

Leon nodded. “…Yeah. Yeah…man…yeah,” as if he were coming out of a trance, and he stooped to gather Wayne up in a huge hug. The old woman clutched the collar of her heavy wool coat, her stringy hair whipping around. Her face was pinched into a vapid smile until she caught Robin’s stare.

Recognition flashed in her eyes. “Why don’t we all go inside and sort this out somewhere warm, yes?”

❂

“My name is Karen. Karen Weaver,” she said to Wayne, leading them to a back corner of an isolated waiting room. “Believe it or not, I actually live right across the street from you, in the big Mexican church-house. Me and my friend Theresa were out hunting mushrooms by the old fairgrounds when I heard your friends screaming that you’d been bitten by a mean old snake.”

Robin followed them, her GoPro clipped to a jacket pocket, recording the conversation. Children’s books and old magazines littered an end table, and behind them an aquarium burbled peacefully.

“What kind of snake?” asked Joel.

Weaver smiled. “Well, that big kid—Peter, was it? He did a real number on it with that mallet, but from what I saw it looked like a copperhead. Anyway, I put a…a special salve on you, a poultice, I suppose, that worked to nullify and draw out most of that venom, and then Theresa carried you out to the road.”

With a giggle, she added, “For an old lady, she’s stronger than she looks.” She bent to watch the fish darting back and forth in the aquarium, talking to the glass. “One of your friends got your cellphone and called 911 for you—Johnny, I suppose his name was.”