Twisted Fate (Tales of Horror) (15 page)

Kramer’s stomach dropped even further. She stepped back and bumped into the bookcase.

A man entered the room behind Mrs. Walsh. His physical features led Kramer to believe that she was now standing in the presence of Kelly’s parents.

“I’ll leave,” Kramer said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Oh no. You won’t be leaving. Ever,” Mrs. Walsh spat the last word and lunged.

Kramer ducked out of reflex. The mallet hit the bookcase above her head, stopping its descent. Kramer looked for an escape. She felt trapped, locked in the corner of the bedroom, both Kelly’s parents blocking her in.

Before Mrs. Walsh could raise the mallet again, Kramer dove past her legs and tried to crawl through the door.

A large hand grabbed her from behind. As much as she writhed and protested, Mr. Walsh held firm and lifted her as if she were weightless.

“We got us a pretty one here,” he said, his breath smelling of onions and garlic.

“No one knows she’s here,” Mrs. Walsh added. “Take her to the basement and do what you do best. Treat her to a little Kelly treatment.”

Kramer grabbed hold of the doorframe and tried to arch herself in a quick twist to dislodge his grip, but he was too strong. The man had to be at least six and a half feet tall.

Mrs. Walsh dropped the mallet again, this time connecting with Kramer’s wrist where she held the doorframe, audibly breaking it.

Kramer screamed. The pain was more intense than anything she had ever felt.

“That’ll teach you to go nosing around in other people’s business,” Mrs. Walsh shouted in Kramer’s face. “Who do you think you are? Now you’re gonna pay, you little bitch.”

Mr. Walsh dragged Kramer out of Kelly’s bedroom, but not before Kramer caught a glimpse of Kelly, still sitting on the chair in the corner, her head in her hands, crying, her body wracked with sobs.

Kramer’s pain became too much. Blackness covered her peripheral vision and then moved inward until Kramer slumped, completely out.

Kramer woke in a basement. It was dark and smelled of oil. A tiny light shone out of a single bulb that dangled from the ceiling.

She looked over at the source of her pain. A rope tied her swollen wrist to a long nail protruding out of the wall. The injury looked horrid. It was already a dark purple, her hand sitting at a bad angle. She looked at her other arm and then down her body. Nothing else damaged yet.

She examined the basement as best she could in the little light she had. It was a mess. Tools scattered around different makeshift tables told her the guy wasn’t organized. Something hung from the ceiling to her right. It had chains, and a small black strip that looked like a seat.

Then it occurred to her what she was looking at. The tools on the tables weren’t just any tools. They were items used in some kind of fetish. The thing hanging from the ceiling was a sex swing of some kind. Behind a beam, barely visible in the light from the bulb, she saw a medieval stockade with the hole for a head and two smaller holes for the hands. Black ropes dangled around the side of it.

What the hell is this place?

Footsteps started down the stairs. Mr. Walsh came into view. He was wearing shorts and a white wife-beater shirt.

They couldn’t hold her for long. Bruce would miss her at dinner and wonder what happened. He knew she wouldn’t stand him up. They’d had a deal. But would he come to the Walsh house and expect to find her tied up in the basement?

“I see you’re finally awake.”

He stepped up close and sniffed her. It was repulsive, like a dog sniffing its food.

“Good,” he said. “I smell fear.”

He lifted the edge of his shirt and wiped his nose, snorting as he did it.

In all her experiences with the dead and working with the police, she had never been in such a bad place.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Whatever it is, there will be no going back. You won’t be able to undo it.” Kramer hated that her voice sounded so weak.

He stared at her for a long moment before responding. “I never
want
to undo nothing.”

“What about Kelly? Wouldn’t you want to change that?” She had nothing to go on. She had to try to keep him talking.

“Never. Kelly was good. One of the best. I left her locked in that stockade over there for almost a week once and she still begged for me to do it to her. The more they beg, the faster I release them. You’ll learn this rule because you’re a bitch, too. You’ll learn. All women are fucking whores and should be treated as such. When you get in touch with your own understanding of this, you’ll be allowed certain freedoms. But until then, I treat you as my personal slave, my personal whore. Over time you’ll learn to love me. Or you’ll fight with the truth, a truth polite society has implanted in your head, and die for that truth.”

Kramer’s insides twisted. She almost lost the contents of her bowels as her urine, warm and sudden, rushed down her leg.

Mr. Walsh looked over at her feet.

“Good,” he smiled. “That’s a start. I love when a whore is self-lubed”

He moved closer and placed his hand, open-palmed in the small puddle that formed at her feet. She leaned into the wall as hard as she could to get away from him, but it was no use.

He lifted his hand and sniffed it. Then he opened his mouth and licked her urine off his fingers.

His smile was evil. His eyes, Lucifer’s.

“You taste good.”

For a large man, he stood up with ease and speed. One second he was on his knees and the next he was standing, his chin coming to her forehead.

“You’ll do fine. One or two months of being my pet and then I’ll bury you in the wall like all the others. Unless of course you’re a good pet. One who enjoys pleasing me.”

Kramer couldn’t help herself. She spat in his face, the phlegm landing beside his mouth in a glob.

He licked around his lips, caught a piece of her saliva, and dragged it into his mouth.

“Damn, do you ever taste good.”

Then with the quickness and deft speed of an athlete, he lunged forward, grabbed her jeans on both sides, and yanked with his vise-grip hands. They snapped and dropped, leaving her exposed to him, her panties the only thing separating her privacy from his insanity. Kramer screamed as long and as loud as she could.

“Oh, you are going to be fun. Maybe later, my wife could join us. I usually leave her out in the beginning. I love all the bodily fluids except blood.” He turned and tossed her jeans away and then looked back at her. “My wife only likes blood. When she joins us, you end up minus a finger or a toe. After a few weeks, you’ll never walk again and then, eventually she takes too many pieces and I’m left with a dead trunk, and that’s no fun. Well, maybe for a few days, but that doesn’t concern you, because you’re already gone by then.”

He laughed. Then he slapped his knee. The laugh grated on her already raw nerves. Kramer cried. Was this it? Could it be that easy?

A loud bang from upstairs made her jump. Pain rushed through her broken wrist.

Mr. Walsh looked up at the ceiling.

“Wait here,” he said.

Where am I going to go, asshole?

 
As Mr. Walsh reached the bottom of the stairs, Kramer heard a gunshot somewhere above. He heard it too, and stopped. In the dim light, she thought she could actually see doubt on his face.

He ran from the bottom of the stairs to a table that was littered with gadgets, lifted one and walked over to stand beside her.

The door opened above. Light shone down the stairs. It looked like someone was holding a flashlight.

“Kramer? You down there?”

“Help!” she yelled, but only half the word escaped her lips before Mr. Walsh clamped a hand over her mouth. Breathing became a chore she couldn’t accomplish.

The tool in his hand was a metal OBGYN-type speculum with the ends shaved down to points like knife-tips. Mr. Walsh turned the sharpened ends toward Kramer’s chest and pushed it forward with all his strength.

Between his grip and the ropes on her wrists, she had little wiggle room, but it was enough to arch her back and spin her chest away. One of the pointed ends of the speculum entered between two rib bones and punctured her right lung, which caused immediate stress in her breathing ability.

A gun went off somewhere in the basement.

Mr. Walsh’s hand came away from her mouth and nose. Breathing was even more difficult than before. It seemed like the one bulb in the basement went out for Kramer.

Kramer regained consciousness as she was being loaded onto a stretcher. An officer was standing over her.

Bruce
.

“What happened?” she managed to ask.

“We got ‘em, thanks to you. You’re going to make it. You’ll be okay.”

“Got who?” she asked, her own voice sounding miles away. “You mean, Mr. Walsh?”

Bruce nodded. “You didn’t show for dinner. The great Kramer would never stand me up. I figured you’d come to the Walsh house, so I thought I’d do a drive-by tonight. I found your car parked a block down. The engine was cold when I touched the hood. It set off my internal radar. When I came to the door, Mrs. Walsh was acting weird. Then I heard someone screaming from the basement. I asked to check it out but Mrs. Walsh said no. I called for backup and explained that I had probable cause and entered the house anyway. I cuffed Mrs. Walsh and then got startled and fired my weapon by mistake. I found you in the basement.”

A paramedic stepped forward and tried to push Bruce away. “Sir, we have to get her to the hospital.”

Kramer lifted her good hand and touched Bruce’s arm. He turned back.

She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“What? What are you trying to tell me?” Bruce asked.

“The …” she waited, breathed in, cringed with the pain, and said, “wall.”

“The wall? Is that what you’re saying?”

Kramer nodded.

“What about the wall? Is there something in the wall?”

Kramer nodded.

Bruce went to ask something and then stopped. He stared down the street, then looked back at her.

“Is Kelly in the wall?”

Kramer nodded.

“Okay.” He looked at the paramedic. “Take her away and bring her back in one piece. Nothing happens to this one, you hear?”

Kramer was lifted into the back of the waiting ambulance, where Kelly sat beside her all the way to the hospital, smiling and mouthing the words,
Thank you.

The Painting

Matt kept his hands below the table so his wife wouldn’t see how much they shook. In order to eat, he brought them up, sliced another piece of meat, dipped it in the steak sauce, and then dropped them out of sight again.

It would be too uncomfortable to be questioned about the source of his anxiety.

After empty conversation, Matt left his salad on the plate, stood, and placed his dishes on the counter—to his relief, without dropping or breaking anything. He told Fran that he’d do the dishes while she was out on her evening run. Then he retired to his office.

After twenty minutes, he heard Fran getting ready to take her evening jog along the nature trails in the woods behind their house. It had never occurred to him before why she would run right after dinner each night.

Maybe she’s not running. Maybe it’s just a fast walk.

A buzz of energy passed through him when he entered his den. He looked up at the picture hanging on the wall.

That damned picture.

He willed the painting to move like it did yesterday. He was sure he’d seen it actually move. The water in the creek had been running, the trees billowing softly in the imaginary breeze that traveled through the painted landscape. He tried to convince himself that what he’d seen the previous night had to be an illusion. Pictures that hung on the walls of people’s homes didn’t have moving parts or double as a TV screen. At least
this
one didn’t … until last night.

He had bought it for five dollars at a garage sale two years ago. What impressed him about it was the deer sipping the creek’s water, and the trail behind the deer. It looked like the trail behind his house. It was so close a replica in fact, that guests over the years had commented on it, wondering if it was a landscape painting of out back. Many times Matt had wanted to tell them it was, just to mess with them.

He turned away from it and crossed the small room where he sat in his leather armchair, which was still close enough to be able to watch the painting for any sign of movement.

The previous evening while sipping his scotch, he’d felt the same buzz of energy in the air. When he looked around to see what had changed, the painting was moving. The creek ran through the center of the canvas, flowing into the frame. Upon closer inspection, the leaves lolled slowly, and after a few moments of staring, Matt felt himself being physically pulled into the landscape.