Terror Town (40 page)

He walked down the remaining six stairs, crouched down and entered the room with the low ceiling.

William was gone. In his place was a large puddle of hardened blood and a severed leg. Connected to the puddle of blood was a trail that led to Cathy Eldritch’s cage. It was empty.

Cathy’s cage was empty.

Nicolas couldn’t believe it. That cage hadn’t been empty in fourteen years. And Nicolas, completely surprised, looked at the cage for a long while before his eyes finally shifted to another trail of blood, which led to Olive Thrift’s cage.

It too was empty!

Nicolas dropped the scalpel; he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. And he could hear screaming now. Not crying but screaming. But why? Who was making that noise?

He turned his head towards the sound and found Cathy sitting in the corner, naked and wilted and covered in scars. She wasn’t alone. William was beside her with eyes open, his mouth agape and his skin white like a sheet of paper. The man’s legs were destroyed, his hands were drenched in blood, his fingers were opened and facing the ceiling like overturned spiders, like he was expecting something to be placed in them. Cathy didn’t seem to notice. She was holding onto William, arms wrapping around the dead man like a blanket. And she was screaming––screaming and screaming; a woman that had finally lost her marbles.

Nicolas said, “Where’s Pumpkin?”

But Cathy didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer, couldn’t think. Being set free from the cage was the final straw that caused her sanity to crack apart in a way that could never be salvaged. She was lost; her mind was elsewhere, drifting, floating; reliving the horror…

3

Cathy watched Nicolas lead William inside the room. She knew what would happen next. Will wasn’t the first man to be led into the basement over the years––led to the slaughter, as she often thought of it. He was the twelfth.

The unfortunate souls were always dealt with in a similar fashion: Nicolas would walk his victims down the stairs, force them to strip and allow them a nice view of the cages. Then after a brief reaction he’d pull the trigger. On two separate occasions Nicolas shot his victim in the head. Twice he shot his victim in the stomach. Three times he shot his victim in the back. Three times he shot arms and legs off, one at a time. And on one terrible occasion––an occasion that haunted Cathy’s thoughts still––he shot his victim in the groin, and when the man went down screaming he shot him again in the neck, lopping the poor bastard’s head clean off.

After his victims had fallen Nicolas would do the unthinkable: he would eat them, or cut them into pieces, or set them on fire, or suck out their eyes, or dismember them with an ax. Often times he made intestine soup and fed it to his babies. Other times he’d strip the victim naked and have sex with the corpse. One time he chopped a man apart with a hammer; one time he operated with a chainsaw. One time he covered a man in chocolate and licked him semi-spotless. But he had never––as far as Cathy had seen––never, shot a man in the legs and left it at that.

Cathy didn’t know. She didn’t
want
to know. Truth was, she didn’t care any more. She hated thinking about Nicolas and all of his crazy bullshit. It was too much.
He
was too much.

After Nicolas shot William he went upstairs to scream in his closet or piss in the sink or do whatever it was that he was doing, and Cathy watched the wounded man screech and cry and pass out where he lay. She thought he was dead.

He wasn’t.

Somehow William found the strength to open his eyes and drag his body across the floor, one leg dangling by a pair of tendons and a rope of meat, the other leg left behind, dribbling blood on the floor. Then, with his teeth clenched and his fingers quivering, he unlocked Cathy’s cage.

She knew what William wanted. He wanted her to save him. He wanted her to crawl from her coop and hunt down the medical attention he needed––but how? Didn’t he know how mistreated she was? Couldn’t he see that she had been abused too?

Cathy was in no position to help. She was under enough strain without being asked to play hero. And besides, that part of her personality died years ago. She couldn’t resurrect it now. Not for him. Not for anyone. She wasn’t a hero; she was a psycho’s plaything. Didn’t he know that?

In the other cage, Olive cried and begged. She said, “Come this way! Come here! Open this cage! Set me free!”

William turned away from Cathy, squealing in pain, fading in and out of consciousness. He crawled across the floor leaving a trail of blood three feet wide. And in time, somehow, he unlocked Olive’s cage.

Olive pushed the door open, crept from her cage and lifted her head high. She started to laugh. It was a terrible sound. There was no humor in that laugh, no happiness. She looked at her hands, her fingers, her bony little stubs… and the strangest thing occurred: she laughed louder than before.

She was almost free; she could hardly believe her luck!

Cathy, however, was not free. She remained in her cage, far away from the wide open door, afraid to step through, afraid of the future. The reason was easy to understand: she was institutionalized now, with her cage being her establishment. Leaving the pen meant leaving the safety of her home. Not to suggest that her home was a safe place to be. It wasn’t. And she knew that––but home was home and the cage was it. Stepping outside meant God knows what, and she was simply not ready for it.

Did stepping from her cage mean a daring escape followed by a barrage of questions from policemen, doctors, news crews and talk shows? Did it mean being captured by Nicolas again, and a punishment so severe that all of her past penalties would seem pleasant in comparison? Or did it mean something worse? Like seeing her family again, for that was the one thing she wanted least of all. Looking into her mother’s eyes now would be a torment she couldn’t possible handle. The very sight of her family would break her heart into pieces. And her mother wouldn’t cry. She would run away screaming in terror. She would run from the monster that Cathy had become, wishing her child had never been born. She was a living nightmare now, an unsightly ghoul. Cathy knew these things, and that’s why her home inside the cage was good enough. She knew her place. Escaping the cage was opening a door to an entirely new brand of nightmare she wanted no part of.

4

Olive crawled past William and scurried towards the stairs. She was smiling. For the first time in five years, ten months and thirteen days, she was really smiling. This was the chance she had been waiting for, the chance she had dreamed about. Her fantasy.

William said, “Help me, please.”

Olive didn’t say anything to the man. She just looked at him and looked away. Then she climbed the stairs like a spider, pretending he wasn’t there. Later she could help, or not help, or do whatever she needed to do. But right now she had to think about herself, she had to escape.

She entered the room filled with clothing and tried to stand up straight. She couldn’t. After years in the cage it hurt too much to stand; plus her balance was wrong, thanks to Nicolas’ little surgeries on her feet.

Didn’t matter. At least, right now it didn’t.

Olive didn’t want to stretch; she wanted to see her mother again, her father again. She wanted to spend time with her younger brother Dale. She wanted to go back to school, play video games and be on the track-and-field team. She wanted to go to baseball games and complain that the seats were bad and the ref was blind. She wanted to read magazines and listen to music. She wanted to organize her dolls and put them in her dollhouse. She wanted to get away from Nicolas.

On the way up the stairs she heard someone yell. No––not someone. Him. He was screaming and yelling again, being insane.

Was this good news, or bad news?

She didn’t know. It would definitely be better if he was asleep but he wasn’t, and nothing was going to stop her from trying to get outside, because being outside, even for a minute, would be the best thing that happened in
years
.

She made her way to the top of the stairs and pushed open the door. It opened slowly; the hinges sounded like they belonged inside a haunted house: CREEEEEEEAAAAK–AK–AK. Once the hinges stopped squeaking she listened to the sounds of Nicolas grunting and cursing and pounding his fist against the wall. POUND. POUND. POUND. The noises were coming from inside the closet, which was beside her; the doorknob was next to her head.

Thinking about Nicolas made her cringe. She could just see him opening the closet door and saying, “Ah ha!” Then he’d drag her downstairs and cut off another finger and piss in her face and talk about setting her on fire. Or maybe he’d lop off an arm this time. After all, this was
bad
. Trying to escape was very, very
bad
. And if she found herself caught there’d be a serious punishment attached to her crime.
Extreme
punishment.

Nicolas pounded on the wall again, crying as he did so. POUND. POUND. POUND. POUND. He followed the pounding with a good long scream.

Olive grinned a frightened grin and scuttled down the hall, towards the front door. She reached for the knob, knowing that freedom was just a few feet away.

But––

She only had three fingers now, two on her left hand and one on her right: two pinkies and a ring finger. Not much to work with, but she
would
work with them. Oh yes. She would do whatever she had to do because she was
getting out
. The time for escape was now. This was her chance, her
only
chance.

Nicolas kicked the door––not the wall but the door––and Olive nearly jumped out of her skin.

He could come out of the closet at any time
, she thought.
Any time at all!

Kneeling at the front door, she wrapped her fingers around the knob. She tried to turn it. Didn’t work. She didn’t have a good enough grip. She tried again. Same result. She put a palm on each side of the knob, pressed her hands together and tried her luck again. Now it worked; the knob was turning.

Olive’s eyes widened. Unlike the lock on her cage, this was a lock she could open. This was a lock she
would
open! Come hell or high water she was getting through that door.

She put a pinkie to the lock and gave it a push. The lock turned so easily she could hardly believe it. With a hand around the knob, she turned and pulled. The door creaked and cracked and made lots of strange sounds but it was opening.

Thank heaven; it was opening!

A cool summer breeze hit her in the face. She thought she might be dreaming and hoped that she wasn’t. She wasn’t. As abused and mentally fragile as she had become, she knew that her escape was really happening. Outside was right there, less than two feet away. Oh God, she felt like crying.

She crawled back a foot, giving the door some room to swing open. Then she did it: she moved through the doorway and onto the porch. She closed the door very quietly and made her way down the steps and along the driveway, hunched over, walking on her hands and feet like a primate.

Laughter came. It was a sick laugh, one that didn’t sound connected to comedy in any way, but there it was. She was laughing, and tears rolled down her face.

Olive realized something: she hadn’t stood up straight in years. She tried again but couldn’t do it. Not yet. Not here. She had to keep moving and worry about her posture later. Slumped over, she lost her balance often. Walking was difficult with every toe amputated, but she would do it; oh yes she would.

She moved past the fire truck, which seemed large and completely out of place sitting in the driveway. Once she was past it she had a choice to make: follow the road left or follow the road right. She couldn’t see much in either direction: the moon and the stars, the trees and the sky. That was about all. The moonlight wasn’t much help. It was dark. Real dark.

She turned right and continued her journey. It wasn’t a bad choice; it wasn’t a good one.

Stone Crescent was like a lollipop: it went around in a circle. She needed to get off the circle if she wanted to get noticed by the people of Cloven Rock. She needed to get onto Stone Path Road and into town.

She followed the loop, hoping a car would pass. None did. The road swerved left and right, but mostly left. She didn’t realize she was walking in a circle. And she didn’t see Stone Path Road when she came to it. Not the first time, the second time, not the third time either. Stone Path Road looked the same as everything else, like darkness.

After two hours and forty-five minutes she became tired and slightly dizzy. Being in no condition for long distance hiking, she made a decision. She would lie down at the side of the road and sleep. A car would come by soon, she trusted. It had to. It just had to. She had no idea that Nicolas was still only a few hundred feet away. Had she known, she would have continued on.

5

5:34 am. “Where is Pumpkin?”