Saltar's Point (30 page)

THIRTY-TWO

It was bound to happen sooner or later. She was penned in until summer and she had grown restless. No longer confined to her bedroom and free to move about, her curiosity had finally gotten the best of her. The voice was ringing in her head, (the inner child’s voice that we all hear occasionally), screaming actually, don’t go in there, you’ll be fresh meat for the grinder, but Abby didn’t listen.

It stood like the entrance to hell, grinning out at her with gilded brass teeth. She rolled the chair forward and stopped just over the threshold. The quiet exhilaration of adventure prickled down her neck, like an adrenaline junkie about to BASE jump. It’s funny when you think about it, why some people have to thwart death just to feel alive. She had never been like that, not before anyways, but now her life was different, there wasn’t as much to risk you might say, and like a gambler down to his last chips she was ready to let it ride on one last throw of the die.

Abby raised the front wheels on her chair and turned around in a close circle pirouette, displaying her recently acquired strength and agility. When the chair faced forward she set the wheels down and pulled shut the brass gate. It clanged off the iron frame with a finality that said now or never. When she was a little girl she had always been afraid of elevators, feeling confined and claustrophobic, but now that fear seemed small by comparison. You can’t really experience claustrophobia until you know what it feels like not to have use of your limbs, not to be able to move, or even feed yourself. But she had been there, still didn’t have use of her legs, never would, but she had clawed her way back to independence, and the way she saw it, the elevator shaft was just one more pathway to regaining a little bit more of her power. The brass lever jutted out of the floor, leaning like a sapling in a high wind. Abby squeezed the handle and pulled, the lever moved surprisingly with little effort, locking in place and kick starting the engine that lowered her ever so slowly to the darkness below.

The elevator came to rest on the dusty basement floor; Abby took one big long breath and opened the gate. The elevator sat adjacent to a hallway wall, not the big open room she had been expecting. Then again the floor plan of this hell hole didn’t make any sense upstairs, so it was a safe wager that it could be screwed up tighter than a snare drum down below. It was pitch black. This Abby had expected. She pulled out the flashlight she had found in Porter’s study and clicked it on, slapping the bottom once or twice to kick the dying batteries into action. A thin weak beam escaped lens. Dust and other small airborne particles danced and swirled in the beam with no predictable pattern or agenda. The floor though did have a pattern, Darrow’s boot prints lay in the dust heading both directions but for the most part his tracks headed westward down the corridor. Abby had a desire to see where he had been spending so much of his time and that was the best place to start. She wedged the flashlight between her thighs creating a makeshift headlight and rolled forward.

The air was thick and musty, smelling putrid beyond description. It was a stench she had never smelled before, a mixture of death and fear stirred together. She did her best not to think about it and pressed onward. If the chair had squeaked so badly before she had not noticed it, but down here it sounded like a freight train. Each turn of the wheels let out a piercing cry, echoing down the corridor announcing her presence to anyone or anything that might be listening.

At the end of the corridor she found the light switch and flipped it upward. The one remaining light flickered before casting light. She switched off her flashlight, trying to conserve what little juice the batteries still had left. She continued to follow Darrow’s tracks like a ranger hunting a beast, and she realized that might not be too far from the truth. At last the corridor opened up to the first room and forced herself not to gasp. Jack had made himself a virtual torture chamber. She glanced from the embalming table to the instruments adorning the walls, and held her breath. The aura in here was a bad one, leaving a disgusting taste in her mouth. On the west wall was a single door that led inward to Jack’s bedroom, she was sure of it. She wheeled herself across the room and pushed the door open. It swung inward easily, and at that moment Abby had the most terrifying experience of her life.

It was exactly as she had dreamed it. The boiler, the bed, the brooms and mops stacked together in the far corner of the room, and one well worn pick axe. It was as if someone had sketched the image in her dream in some sick and twisted prank of the paranormal, Andy Warhol meets Clive Barker in a collage of pop art and horror.

Abby sat shaking in her chair, unable to decide what to do next. Should she follow her dream and strike down the wall with the axe, or should she turn tail and run (or roll) as fast as she could from the basement? The choice was obvious, at least to her. If she struck down the wall Jack would know what she had been up to. Abby turned the chair around and began to roll herself out of the room, away from the horror of her dream. As she began her retreat she felt a presence at the back of her neck. It wasn’t as if someone were there squeezing the back of her neck, but the goose pimples that formed on her arms told a different story. There was an ominous presence and Abby knew exactly from where it came.

The demon had awoken, slowly acknowledging the being that had disturbed its slumber. He could feel her, sense her presence. He arose behind the boiler room wall and forced himself forward, moving quickly, but with purpose. Abby too moved with purpose, rolling her hands end over end on the wheels and moving the chair forward. The squeaking intensified, both in frequency and in volume. She exited the embalming room and began the long journey back down the hallway to the elevator. The overhead light had gone out, and it was pitch black. In her haste and lack of vision she rebounded off the walls several times hitting both sides of the corridor and leaving black streaks where the wheels sloughed off small amounts of rubber. The dust on the walls was also not free from disturbance and small clouds puffed around her making her cough. The chair began to squeak continuously, heightening her fear. Abby could feel the demon behind her, making his way through the darkened corridor with ease, his luminous eyes capable of sight in the absence of light. In her haste Abby did not see the ninety-degree bend in the hallway. The wall collided with her momentum and stopped her instantly. She pitched forward and struck her forehead against the wall hard, opening a six-inch gash that began bleeding profusely. The salty red fluid stung her eyes and her head was pounding with a concussion, making her dizzy. She struggled to remain conscious. Her grasp on reality was slowly slipping away. She turned the chair and resumed rolling with an inner strength that she didn’t know she had. Fearful of colliding with another wall she fumbled with the flashlight in her lap, trying futilely to switch it on while still working the wheels forward. She slammed into the side of the wall again and felt the flashlight jarred loose from her grip. Its plastic casing made a clicking sound as it bounded off the concrete floor behind her. Now Abby was sealed permanently in the darkness.

A scant fifty yards behind her the demon was closing the distance, making up ground with long gangly strides. The rotted putrid flesh on its legs crackled as it moved. In the darkness it was at home and it maneuvered through the hallway effortlessly, intent to reach her before she made the second floor.

At last Abby reached the final stretch of hallway where the elevator sat waiting. She began to see a bit more clearly despite the persistent darkness, and an ironic thought occurred to her. The concussion had dilated her pupils even more than normal in the pitch black, allowing her to see the outline of the walls. No longer concerned with smashing into the sides of the corridor, she increased her speed. At last she saw the soft glow of the elevator light etching its outline in the darkness ahead. She could feel the demon behind her. It was close and getting closer. As the elevator appeared on her left hand side she slammed her palm down hard on the left wheel halting its motion and whipping the chair hard to the left. She was thrown out of the chair by centrifugal force, striking her knees and elbows on the elevator floor. The top layer of skin evaporated under the friction and left her joints burning in the cool air. With her last bit of strength she pulled the chair into the elevator and slammed the gate closed. It clanged eerily as the demon smashed into it, his ghostly mass denting and bending the bars inward. They creaked in protest but held. The demon shrieked again, this time in frustration as it reached through the gate with a long sinewy skeletal arm, hooked claws stopping mere inches from Abby’s face.

It was the first time she had been this close to the demon. She could see the rage and hatred burning hot behind his glowing stare. Their eyes locked, passing information between them too great for words. The adversaries studied each other a moment longer. Abby drew a breath and spoke directly to the demon for the first time.

“I’ll see you in hell fuck face. But not today.”

She pulled the brass lever and the elevator began its ascent. The demon howled again. Abby could feel the vibrations of its voice through the floor as she laid face down trying desperately to regain her breath. A few moments passed and she was able to climb back into the chair. She would not feel completely at ease until she was safely back on the second floor. At the top of the shaft the elevator came to rest with a soft jolt. Abby wheeled herself towards the grand staircase and the rope that jutted down its length from the top banister above. She did not look forward to the climb in her current condition, but her mind took solace in the fact that without anyone to lower the elevator the demon would have to wait patiently in the basement for Jack to return before being able to ascend to the floor above.

Even before the thought had cleared from her head the elevator roared to life one more time. The cables squeaked and the gears clacked together as it began to lower back down to the basement. But that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. There was no way to call the elevator from below, and only someone pulling the manual lever could start it. But Abby’s eyes told her another story and she watched in horror as the cables lowered the elevator.

She redoubled her efforts and wheeled herself as fast as possible to the staircase. There she plopped herself to the floor a final time and quickly tied the chair to one end of the rope, not taking the time to secure a double knot. She pulled quickly, hand over hand. The chair smacked into each step as it moved upward. Whack! Whack! Whack! In rapid succession it sounded against the oak stairs. And then as it neared the top the unthinkable happened, the knot came loose, and Abby watched as the chair began to fall back down, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. Soon its momentum toppled it backwards and it began to bounce end over end like a racecar in a horrific crash. The clack of the elevator as it reached a stop on the basement floor was overshadowed by the clamor of the toppling wheelchair.

Abby lay helplessly on her stomach as the chair came crashing down on top of her, bouncing off her shoulders before falling to the side, the top wheel turning slowly. Abby dazed by the accident was jarred back into action by the sound of the elevator as it started its ascent. The other end of the rope sat at the top of the stairs where it had come free from her chair. There was no way she could get back up and the demon was slowly rising up the shaft. With no other option Abby did the only thing she could think of, unsure if she had enough strength to accomplish the grueling task. She grabbed the first banister with her hands and began to drag her body up the stairs one at a time. With each step she grabbed the next bar and pulled again, every muscle in her shoulders and back screamed in agony but she would not listen. She was almost three-quarters of the way to the top when she heard the gate slide open and the demon’s crackling strides as it approached the stairs. Then the steps echoed with each hoof fall as it bounded them three at a time. Abby counted the last three stairs as she pulled herself upward in what seemed like an agonizing eternity. One. The demon was close now. Two. Closer still. Three. She pulled herself onto the second floor and began to drag herself along the hardwood. She had gone about ten feet when she felt the demon standing directly over her. It was the end now, she knew, but she refused to die with her back to her killer. In one final act of defiance she flipped herself over and stared the demon in the face one last time. His mouth curled into a horrific grin revealing razor-sharp black teeth dripping with mucus-like saliva, putrid and yellow.

One large claw swiped down at Abby, streaking in a blur towards her face. Abby closed her eyes and waited for her skin to be ripped from her skull. A moment passed and nothing happed. Petrified but curious she opened her eyes once again to watch the claw come down another time. It passed harmlessly through her body like a puff of cold air. The demon became more enraged and swiped at her repeatedly, each time its claws could not find the flesh it so desperately wanted to slice. It was then Abby realized that the demon appeared translucent, like a hologram projected from an unseen camera. An epiphany dawned on her; the demon was not strong enough. He was weak up here on the second floor. Relief flooded through her and she began to laugh hysterically.

“YOU’RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH!” She shouted in the demon’s face and then began to laugh and cry even harder. “HA, YOU’RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH! YOU’RE WEAK JUST LIKE ME!”

It came out loud and garbled, her speech was barely coherent now due to her injured tongue, but the demon knew all too well what it was she said, and that she taunted him. He swiped a few more times before giving up and resigning himself to the fact that he could not reach her up here. He glared at her for a moment longer before turning and heading back down the stairs. He could here the woman cackling hysterically behind him as he left. She screamed out again, piecing him with her garbled words.