Authors: James Roy Daley
Suddenly he was furious.
His face turned red and his eyeballs quivered like he was having an epileptic fit. Screaming, he crushed the rodent’s body against his chin and inhaled the wild scent with a loud and noisy snort. Blood dripped from his fingers. It ran down his face and neck. After a few seconds he blasted the tiny creature’s body against the steering wheel like a slave driver cracking a whip. Fuzzy snapped in half. The rodent’s head, chest, and his two front legs flew through the air, smacked against the windshield, and fell onto the dash. Gore hung from the exposed ribcage like pasta.
Nicolas looked at the mangled legs squished between his fingers. Anger, frustration, and excitement, became diluted with feelings he didn’t understand: loss, despair, misery, confusion. The emotional overload was too much. He began crying. His face turned red and his bottom lip launched into the foxtrot.
“It’s not fair,” he exclaimed, loudly. “It’s just not fair!”
When he was done with his brief, yet psychotically expressive bout of mourning, he rolled down the window and tossed Fuzzy’s legs outside. They hit the ground with a
SPLOTCH
and rolled in the dirt. He lifted his glasses from his lap, wiped the dribbles of gore from the lenses, and placed them on his teary-eyed face. He started the car and drove, ignoring the string of intestines that was clinging to his hair and the blood dripping from his chin. He didn’t care how he looked––driving down Stone Path Road with his fingers strangling the steering wheel and guts rolling off his stubble, but he did consider shooting himself. He also considered setting the town on fire, and wondered what it would be like to go on a nice, big, killing spree.
The upper half of Fuzzy sat on the dashboard near the steering wheel, lying in a small pond of blood. Black bubble eyes stared lifelessly out the window, still looking very much alive. Drops of purple and red waste blemished the glass, framing the animal’s body with macabre style. And as the animal’s mouth slid open one final time, and the car’s wheels rolled towards their destination, Nicolas wondered if there was such a thing as rodent heaven. If so, the squirrel was surely there.
8
It was Roger that spoke first. “Wow,” he said. “Just… wow.”
Dan couldn’t help but agree. Looking down such an unusual hole was astonishing. “See the light switch attached to the wall? It doesn’t work.”
Roger eyed the switch quickly before looking down the hole again. “No?”
“Nope.”
Cameron picked a hammer off the floor, stepped close to the edge, and dropped it.
As the hammer disappeared from view, Dan looked at Cameron flabbergasted. “Hey! I need that!”
“So what?” Cameron replied. “We’re going down there, aren’t we?”
“Yeah but… ” Dan trailed off, reflecting on the fact that he didn’t reach the bottom earlier. He considered the value of the hammer. It wasn’t worth much, ten bucks maybe. Still, he couldn’t help thinking he’d soon buy a new one.
“I didn’t hear it hit,” Roger said. “Did you?”
“No,” Cameron said.
“I wasn’t listening,” Dan admitted. A moment later he grabbed a crowbar off the floor. His intention was obvious.
“Don’t you
need that
Dan?” Cameron mocked. “It looks
important
.”
Dan smiled. “We’re going down there,
remember
?”
“Oh,” Cameron said with a grin. “That’s right!
I forgot!
You’re so smart!”
Roger rolled his eyes.
Daniel dropped the tool. All three of them listened. Seconds slipped past and nobody heard a thing. In time, Roger stepped away from the edge saying, “That is one deep hole.”
“Seems that way, doesn’t it?” Dan replied. “Know what? You guys should chill out a minute. I’m going to the garage to grab another extension cord.”
As Daniel went upstairs, Cameron lifted the bag of alcohol and pulled out a beer. “I’m assuming you want one?”
“Sure do.”
She tossed Roger a Bud and took one for herself.
Roger opened the bottle. Beer foamed. He put his mouth to the opening, drank like a second year college student, and sat the bottle on the floor next to a screwdriver. Afterwards, he unraveled an extension cord and plugged it into an outlet. He tied the female end of one cable to the male end of another, holding them together with a knot. He tied the second cord to the third. Now three extension cables were connected and the knots he created insured they wouldn’t become unplugged.
Cameron said, “Maybe you should wrap the cable around the pickets.”
“Huh?”
“The pickets,” she repeated, pointing towards the staircase. “The pickets in the stairs. Knot the extension cable around a few of them so it doesn’t get pulled from the outlet in wall. It will, you know.”
Roger looked at the cable, the outlet, and the pickets. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Now I get it. Good idea.”
He followed her instructions.
Daniel returned. “I’ve got two more cables. One isn’t very long, eight feet maybe. But the other one is a thirty footer.”
“Nice.”
“Hand ‘em over,” Roger said. “I’ll knot ‘em together.”
Daniel passed the cables to Roger. “I’m going to put the beers in the fridge.”
“Cool.”
Daniel went upstairs with the bag of booze and returned with an open beer in his hand.
Roger tied the last of the cables together. “Now, the moment of truth.”
He tied the work light to the extension cables and plugged the light in. 500 watts of white light blasted the room.
“So far, so good,” Cameron said, putting a hand on her hip.
Daniel agreed. “Yep. So far so good.”
Roger hung the light over the hole and when he lowered it, he kept his arms steady. As the light descended the weight in his hands increased. Soon, the light became quite heavy and he asked Daniel for assistance. Dan took the cable in his hands, relieving Roger of the full burden. The two men released more and more cable. The knots tightened. The light fell farther into the pit, slowly spinning in a circle, knocking out webs and lighting the area around it. Looking down, there wasn’t much to see: just a ladder and four walls, really. Nothing more.
“I can’t believe how far the light is dropping,” Cameron said with her eyes wide. “It’s like a bottomless pit.”
“That’s what I thought,” Daniel laughed, still releasing cable.
Soon, the cable was unraveled, all ninety-something feet of it. When the men released their grip, the strain the cable put on the pickets was more than they anticipated. The pickets bowed in the middle, threatening to snap. There was no way the cable’s male end would have stayed in the outlet without the pickets help––no chance, not in one hundred million years.
“What now?” Cameron asked.
Dan lifted an eyebrow. “Still want to go down?”
“I do,” Cameron said, sounding slightly unsure.
“I do too.” Roger confirmed, offering happy a smirk. “I’m just wondering what the smart thing to do might be.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, what should we do? Drop a flashlight? I’d like to know where the bottom is, don’t you?”
After a moment of silence, Daniel said, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”
Daniel ran to the kitchen and opened the cupboard doors beneath the sink. There was a bag of sponges sitting in a milk crate, along with some cleaning materials and rags. He grabbed the sponges and closed the doors. After riffling through a couple of drawers he found a half-roll of duct tape. He took the tape and the sponges downstairs, unrolled a long piece of tape and dropped the roll on the floor. After opening the bag of sponges he pulled one out and dropped the bag onto the floor by his feet. With the line of tape against the sponge, he picked up a flashlight.
“Wait,” Cameron said.
“Why?”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“And?” Dan pressed the flashlight against the sponge and began taping them together.
“And it’s a great idea: wrapping sponges around the flashlight. You’re going to sponge it and drop it, right? You want to drop the flashlight without breaking it.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you know what we should do?”
“No, what?”
“Do you have a
Nerf
football, or better yet a beach ball? If we could deflate a beach ball halfway we could put the light inside the ball a bit, you know… giving it more protection. Or we could wrap the light inside a couple of plastic balls I guess. What do you think?”
“Not bad,” Dan said.
“We could do both,” Roger said. “We could wrap the flashlight inside the sponges
and
between a couple of balls. How about that Dan, do you have any balls?”
“I think so. Want me to look?”
“Yes,” Roger said, taking the sponge/flashlight/tape combination from Dan’s hand. “You look and I’ll tape the sponges to the flashlight.”
“This is exciting!” Cameron said. “I feel like I’m starting an adventure!”
Dan nodded. “It’ll be interesting to see what’s down there.”
“Absolutely,” Roger agreed. “I never expected to be on a quest today.”
Dan slapped his hands together. “You want to come to the garage with me, Cam? Help me look?”
“Sure.”
“Okay then, let’s go!”
9
Nicolas Nehalem drove along Stone Path Road slowly, inspecting every car parked in every driveway. If the driveway was long and he needed a closer look, he parked and approached the building on foot. He was systematic and methodical. Cameron was located in a perfectly terrible position, and the only way she’d escape would be due to negligence on his part. And that wasn’t going to happen.
Nicolas found three driveways together that led onto a short, fat peninsula; he had himself a winner.
Dan’s car was located beneath the shade of a large elm tree, two hundred feet from the road, in the driveway of a summer home that looked like it cost a Hollywood fortune. The house was big and beautiful and stylishly elegant.
Nicolas walked around the house slowly and cautiously, making note of the surrounding area. He peeked through the building’s windows with care, which were strong and thick and designed to give intruders a hard time.
He didn’t see anyone inside the house, figured Cameron and her friends were either upstairs or in the basement. Either way, it didn’t matter. He wanted to wait until the evening turned to night and the sky became black.
Nicolas returned to his car, which wasn’t far from Dan’s driveway. He opened the trunk and let out a small gasp, surprised at what he discovered.
Pauline Anderson, a.k.a., Pauline Stupid-Head, was in the trunk. She looked five years dead.
She wasn’t.
The corpse was only twenty-six days old, but her body told a different story.
Pauline’s muscles had shriveled; her skin had deteriorated. She was exceedingly dehydrated on the day she died––the day Nicolas emptied his cage, dragging her from her shit-filled pen, screaming and crying, pleading and begging, only to have her throat slit while Olive and Cathy watched in terror.
Now she looked truly monstrous, horrific.
Her lips had curled into tight stringy worms. Her eyes had fallen into her head. Chipped arrowhead teeth pointed in all directions, encased inside her purple, rotting maw. Her hands had no fingers; her feet had few toes. Her arms and legs looked like they had been embalmed, salted, and cured. The only place on her body that seemed recently deceased was her stomach, which was a soup bowl of maggots and flies.
It was hard to believe she just turned sixteen.
Nicolas scratched his ear and sighed. “I forgot about you,” he said. “I forgot you were back there. You should have told me.”
He laughed. He made a joke.
“Now where am I going to put Cameron, huh? Do you think I should let her ride up front? I don’t. My God, girl... you’ve been nothing but trouble since you were thirteen years old.”
Nicolas considered throwing the corpse in the bushes but decided against it. Uncalculated moves could only bring unwanted trouble. He was better off leaving her in the trunk. Cameron might not like being back there with a corpse but
tough-tit said the shit
, she’d get over it. And besides, home was only three minutes away.
He lifted a shotgun and a box of shells from beside Pauline’s corpse. He placed them on the gravel and pushed the carcass to the back of the trunk, making room for Cameron. He closed the trunk with a grunt, lifted the shotgun and the shells from the road, and walked up the driveway grinning.
Halfway to the house he stopped, listening to the sound of a door opening. He could hear people stepping outside. A man and a woman were talking.
Nicolas scratched his head.